


Kissed by a Muse

by iam93percentstardust



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Greek Religion & Lore Fusion, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Loosely Inspired by a Movie, M/M, No Steve bashing here, Only like one chapter though, Past Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:20:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26340280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iam93percentstardust/pseuds/iam93percentstardust
Summary: Two years ago, Bucky returned home from the war, disillusioned, injured, and angry. Two months ago, he started working at Rogers Records, recording other bands when all he wants is for his band to be the one performing. Two minutes ago, he ran into a mysterious stranger at the grocery store who argued with him over the last box of Eggos, kissed him, and ran off with the waffles.And now he can't stop thinking about him.Bucky sees him everywhere: on the album cover he's recording, walking by his sound booth. And then, as he's staying late at work one night, he hears someone singing down the hall. But that can't be right - because that'shissong, one that he's never performed for anyone. He isn't really surprised though to find that it's the stranger who kissed him in the grocery store that night. Only someone who can seemingly appear and disappear like this stranger can could possibly be singing a song he's never sung for anyone.The stranger offers him a chance: a chance to get his life back on track, to perform for the owner of the biggest record company in the world, a chance to get his band back and make it big. With an offer like that, how could Bucky refuse?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Comments: 65
Kudos: 190





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> All songs are taken from the 1980 film, Xanadu, which this fic is loosely inspired by, because I have no talent for writing songs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note about Captain America in this verse: this isn't a traditional Captain America origin story. In this fic, Steve spent most of his life small and sick and then grew and got better a few years before this chapter. There isn't a supersoldier serum and Captain America is exclusively a propaganda invention for stage shows and movies instead of Erskine's original intentions.

Anthony is singing as he finishes pinning back his messy curls. It’s something light and airy that Steve thinks he might have heard on the radio a few weeks ago. He’s pretty sure it might have been sung by a woman then but it still sounds right in Anthony’s soft tenor and he smiles. Anthony sings almost all the time, except when he’s talking, which is just as often. Luckily, Steve loves to hear him sing. It feels like the entire world stands still when he sings.

He pauses tying the laces on his boots and sits back on the bed, closing his eyes as he listens to Anthony sing. This might be the last time he gets to hear him like this. Even Captain America can be drafted; Steve had gotten his papers only a few weeks ago and his company ships out today. But Anthony—Anthony hasn’t been drafted yet. He’s still touring with the stage show and hopefully will be up through the end of the war. Steve knows from Arnie’s letters how bad the front is. He hopes that Anthony has to go nowhere near that.

_Anybody blue?_

_Anybody needin’ someone too?_

_Anyone feelin’ cold?_

_No one there you can hold_

Steve opens his eyes to see Anthony turning away from the mirror and smiling at him. He crooks his finger and Anthony rises, sauntering over toward him, naked as the day he was born. Anthony’s body is lovely, lithe the way a dancer should be, tanned from the past six months they’ve spent touring the southern states in the middle of the summer. Steve counts himself incredibly lucky that it’s _his_ bed Anthony chooses to spend his time in, that it’s _him_ he decides to love.

Anthony could have had anyone he wants but he chose Steve. No one has ever chosen Steve before, not like this. He grew up small, only shooting up to where he is now during his last growth spurt a couple years ago. Most dames hadn’t wanted to dance with someone they might step on and most men hadn’t wanted to waste their freedom on a man like him. He’s different now, bigger, stronger, and has been for a few years but he’d been so wary that he had ignored all ventures. But then there had been Anthony, who danced for the propaganda shows and didn’t complain about the stage makeup the way Steve’s understudy did and hadn’t laughed when the whole cast had thrown a party to celebrate their first performance and Steve had drunk way too much.

_Don’t wait to get old and grey_

_I’m gonna blow all the clouds away_

_Cause there is nothing I would rather do_

Anthony settles himself on Steve’s laps, arms linking loosely around his neck. Steve’s hands settle on his waist like they belong there, the way they’ve belonged there for the last year. It had taken them a while to get to this point—they’d had an explosive start when Senator Brandt had announced that the face of the wartime propaganda effort to encourage both every able-bodied man to volunteer and the soldiers fighting an impossible war overseas would be a comic book artist with no performing background. Anthony had taken it as a personal affront to the apparent sanctity of their show, something that Steve had thought didn’t exist considering he lifted a motorcycle during the show. But the long hours on the road had forced them together and as Steve had settled into his role and discovered that he actually wasn’t too bad at this performing stuff, they’d grown closer and closer until Anthony had crawled into his hotel bed one night and kissed him.

“I love you,” he whispers and Anthony smiles brilliantly as he feathers the next part of the song across Steve’s lips.

_Forget about the blues tonight_

_Sweet thing_

_Forget about the rules tonight_

_Sweet thing_

_I wanna dance with you_

_Until the sun comes creepin’ through_

_I wanna dance with you_

_I won’t stop pleasin’ you_

Steve kisses him before he can continue the song any further. Anthony makes an offended noise but he sinks into the kiss readily enough, parting his lips on a sigh to let Steve slip his tongue into his mouth. This is their last kiss after their last night following their last performance. He wants to make the most of it that he can and if that means interrupting Anthony’s song to kiss him instead despite knowing how much it irritates his lover, then he’ll gladly do so.

“So terribly rude,” Anthony murmurs as Steve kisses the curve of his cheekbone to his ear and then down the line of his jaw. He tilts his head to the side so Steve can suck a bruise underneath his chin.

“You can keep singing, sweetheart,” Steve tells him.

Anthony laughs but just runs his fingers through the soft hair at Steve’s nape instead of starting up the song again. “Oh my darling, you’ll be safe out there, won’t you?”

“What do you take me for, reckless?”

The look on Anthony’s face is wholly unamused and Steve thinks about the time he challenged Johnny to a fight over one of the dancers’ honor. He’d been armed with nothing but a trash can lid and Johnny, who had once been the lightweight boxing champion of New York, probably would have destroyed him if Anthony hadn’t stepped in.

“I wish I didn’t have to go,” he says, glancing out the window of their hotel room—only the finest for Captain America, of course, paid for out of Senator Brandt’s own pocket. The sun is rising over the city. He’ll be expected at the docks soon. It doesn’t stop him from kissing Anthony again, desperately, sadly, wondering if he’ll ever see him again.

“You’ll keep singing, won’t you?” he asks. He thinks it might just about kill him if this war takes Anthony’s songs from him.

Anthony laughs like he has a secret—and maybe he does. There’s plenty that they don’t know about each other. Steve knows that Anthony has eight siblings and that when he lives with them, they live in an apartment on the second floor but he doesn’t know where that is or where Anthony came from before this. The other dancers say it was like he just appeared on the stage of _Captain America and the Howling Commandos_ , nary an audition or even so much as an introduction but it was like he had been there forever.

“I promise you, darling, nothing in the world could stop me,” Anthony tells him. “And you? I expect to hear all about the comics you’ve created while you’re over there: _The Adventures of Captain America on the Western Front_.”

“I told you I would, didn’t I?” Steve responds. He chances another look out the window. They’re running out of time.

“Promise me,” Anthony says urgently, a rare serious gleam in his eyes. This, for whatever reason, is important to him. “Promise me you’ll keep drawing. I want to hear about them when you come back.”

“And you’ll be here? When I come back?”

Anthony bites his lip, hesitating. Steve understands. The world is so uncertain right now. Who’s to say that there will even be a New York to come back to? If the Nazis are able to repel the Allied forces, he doubts that Hitler will stop at European domination.

“Of course,” Anthony says eventually and it’s a lie but it’s a kind one. He leans forward and kisses Steve again, softly. “Be careful, Steve.”

“I will.”

He gently sets Anthony on his feet so he can finish lacing up his boots as Anthony slips on a shirt. He thinks it might be one of his, judging by the way it slips off of Anthony’s shoulder. For a moment, he aches to damn the draft and the war to hell, aches to take his lover back to bed, peel him out of that shirt, and make love to him all over again. But when Anthony looks up at him and smiles sadly, he knows that won’t be an option for the two of them.

Anthony walks him to the door of their suite, kisses him one last time there and Steve just knows that this is the last kiss they’ll ever share. There will be no others, even after he returns from the war.

As he closes the door behind him, he hears Anthony singing again though it sounds a little choked, a little wet.

_Honey for awhile_

_Give a boy a chance to show some style_

_If you got no love to spare_

_Tell me lies, I don’t care_


	2. Watch the Shadows Fall

The alarm goes off at an early 4 am just as it has every day for the last two years. He groans, rolls over, jabs at it until it stops beeping. Another morning, another day, another long eighteen hours of pretending he’s in a good mood and he’s not just floating through life in a daze, wondering what the point of it all is.

Sam says that he might not have so many issues if he allowed himself to wake up at a later time instead of forcing himself up before the crack of dawn to go running before work. But Bucky knows from too much experience that if he goes any later, then he runs into the other joggers and he can’t handle one more pitying stare. He just—he can’t. If he’s careful, he can get all the way to work without anyone noticing that his left sleeve is empty and once he’s there, most of the regular staff know better than to comment on his missing arm, even though he’s only been working there for two months. Still though, that makes it better than the pizza place he’d been working at before. He’d worked there for six months and all the way up until quitting, people had asked him if he needed help on the cash register like he somehow couldn’t handle the buttons with one hand.

He groans again and rolls himself out of bed. He’s wasted five minutes with his moping. If he doesn’t get his ass in gear, he’ll run into yappy Mrs. Smith and her irritating terriers on the stairs again because for whatever reason, she _also_ likes to go out early in the morning for her “precious Booboo and Mister Snuffles’s” walk. Fuck, he hates those dogs. Hates Mrs. Smith too but at least he can pretend to smile for her though he’s pretty sure these days, it looks more like a grimace if the way she’d been taken aback last time they passed each other on the stairs was any indication.

What’s left of his arm is hurting again. Bucky twitches the curtains aside and glances out the window. It’s overcast, the clouds dark and grey. He turns on the TV in his room as he gets dressed, switching over to the weather channel. This late in the year, clouds like the ones outside could mean rain or snow and both make his shoulder ache. As per usual, the forecast isn’t calling for anything, is all but denying the existence of the current clouds, and he snorts. So he’s safe to count on snow and possibly sleet. That’s how it always works, right?

He pulls on a pair of dark blue sweatpants; they read _Air Force_ across the back and don’t fit right in the ass so he assumes Sam must have left them here at some point and they just got absorbed into his laundry pile. It’s not unusual—Bucky himself has a sweatshirt at Natasha’s and one of his favorite ball caps at Clint’s and he knows that this pair of sweatpants aren’t the only items of the band’s hanging around his apartment, there’s no reason for him to be as bitter as he is except that maybe he still hasn’t really forgiven Sam for going into the service just like he did but Sam walked out with a cushy job at the VA’s and Bucky walked out with PTSD and missing an arm.

It’s ridiculous. He shouldn’t be this bitter. He knows that it’s not Sam’s fault. His team had flown rescue missions, he hadn’t been sent directly into combat like Bucky had, but it’s still hard sometimes.

He runs the back of his hand across the window, testing how cold it is. It’s pretty chilly so he throws on a thick hoodie over the long-sleeved t-shirt he’s wearing before heading out to the kitchen where he grabs a water bottle and a granola bar if he gets hungry during his run.

His phone chimes as he’s heading out the door and he pauses to check it. It’s Nat, the only other person in their friend group who’s up as early as he is. He asked her about it once, curious to know why she gets up so early when she doesn’t have any nightmares to speak of and isn’t worried about people giving her funny looks. She had told him that she’d recently started taking a tai chi class. He’d asked Clint about it later because he’d had a feeling that there was more to the story and found out that she’d only started after he got out of the hospital after coming back so now he thinks she does it because of him.

He isn’t really sure how he feels about that but he thinks he should be happy to know that there’s someone out there who cares about him enough to disrupt their own sleep schedule for him.

He looks over the apartment once, taking in the sleek furniture Sam had chosen for him, the decorations that Nat had picked out. There isn’t much there to indicate that someone actually lives there and it isn’t just one of those apartments that complexes show to renters—except for the guitar in the corner of the living room. That looks well-loved even though Bucky hasn’t been able to play it in two years. He stares at the guitar for a moment longer and then glances back at his phone as it chimes again before the depression gets to be too much.

**From Nat:** _Dinner tonight at Calliope’s_

**From Nat:** _You’re coming. Sam said he’s buying_

* * *

Nat tells him he’s _lucky_ he has this job at Rogers Records. It’s a job in his field for a company that actually cares about its employees and treats them fairly and they didn’t ask any questions about the string of jobs he’s held and lost in the last two years since he came back from overseas. So he should be grateful, right?

But he isn’t. He’s only been working there for two months and he absolutely despises it. It’s not really the job so much as it is the reminder of everything he lost. He goes in every morning and records whoever is currently working on their album and he wishes he could just kick them out and take over the booth. His band, the one that he’d left behind when he joined the army, they’d been on their way to something but then he’d needed to go to college and his parents hadn’t wanted him to take out student loans so he’d agreed to joining the army.

He wishes he hadn’t now. Bucky hasn’t been able to even pick up his guitar in two years, let alone play. Once, he’d been able to play with the best of them. These days, he’s lucky if he can even manage to pick out a tune before the guitar slips off his bent knee. He knows there are musicians out there who are able to play one-handed but he hasn’t been able to pick it up the way they have. And even if he could, he’s not sure that he even really _wants_ to. He misses playing, really, more than just about anything, but he thinks about all the stares that he gets just on the subway he takes to work every morning, how he goes running so early just so he can avoid the people, and then he thinks about the screaming crowds who used to go to the band’s performances and how they’ll all see his arm and he thinks maybe being able to play again isn’t such a great idea.

“Morning, Logan,” Bucky mutters as he opens the door to the control room. “Who are we working with today?”

Logan grunts a greeting and checks the roster. “Morning session with Spider-Verse. Afternoon with the twins.”

Bucky likes working with Logan. Logan has never once said anything about his arm other than showing him the scars on his leg—apparently, Rogers Records likes hiring veterans—he’s always willing to cover for Bucky when the sound gets to be too much and he needs to duck out into the hallway, and he’s as grumpy and sullen as Bucky himself can be. Working with him is quiet, exactly what he needs, as opposed to the days when he works with Scott or Luis, neither of whom would know the meaning of quiet if it bit them in the ass.

“Great,” he says, sounding about as enthusiastic as he feels, which is to say, not at all. “So where are they?”

“Stacy called about twenty minutes ago. She said they got held up in traffic.”

Bucky groans and rests his head against the backrest of his chair. “Doesn’t this make the third time they’ve been late for a session?” he asks.

“Fourth.”

“I hope they know I’m not staying late if they don’t finish their album today.”

“She said they couldn’t get Parker out of bed.”

“Yeah and that happens every single time,” he grumbles. “You’d think they’d learn to plan for that.”

Logan just shrugs, silently agreeing with him. Bucky settles back further into his chair and takes a sip of his coffee, trying to get rid of his disgruntlement. Sure it’s irritating that their first band of the day isn’t there to actually do their job and making them late for everything else to do but he also has to remind himself that they’re just teenagers. When he’d been their age, he had been a holy terror so he can’t really blame them, especially when he knows this band is a runaway success that was never expecting to be as popular as they are.

He puts his coffee off to the side and double checks the controls on the soundboard, making sure that none of them have been moved. He’s the only person who always works in this room—the others rotate out—so theoretically, the controls shouldn’t move but sometimes, he comes in in the morning and they’re messed up. Bucky suspects the janitors. He appreciates them cleaning, really he does, god knows he’s terrible about picking up after himself but he wishes they knew enough about the soundboards to make sure they put the controls back the way they found them after dusting the board.

He can hear the loud footsteps of the young members of Spider-Verse coming down the hall along with their voices urging each other to hurry up and exchanges a rueful look with Logan. “Looks like we’re up,” he says.

Logan nods and scowls at the door. “Could be quieter about it.”

“Have you ever known a teenager to be quiet?”

The door slams open before Logan can answer and the band spills inside, eagerly chattering and shouting apologies for their lateness.

“Don’t want to hear it,” Logan tells them firmly and they quiet down. “Let’s get started.”

* * *

When Bucky had been a kid, he had dreamed of being a musician. His mom had often told him that he sang before he could talk, that he was humming even before that. His toys had all been musical and when he’d been five years old, his parents enrolled him in piano lessons. He had played the piano for three years until he came home from school one day, announced to his dad that his teacher had played the guitar that day during their lessons, and now he wanted to learn how to play. His dad had promptly gone out, bought him his first guitar, and signed him up for lessons with the best instructor in New York. Bucky had never looked back.

Music had been his first love, his only love really, until he was in college. He’d dated sporadically in high school for that first year but then towards the end of the year, he’d met Nat and through her, he’d found Clint and Sam and when they all found out that they played, they’d decided to form a band and that didn’t leave a whole lot of time for dating but hey, typical high schoolers, right? Convince yourself you’re the shit and then play in a garage band all the way through high school and quit when you all go off to college.

But it hadn’t been like that with them. _They_ hadn’t been like that. They had been _good_ and just about anyone who heard them knew it. Nat had had contacts in the industry (she seemed to have contacts everywhere but Bucky had never told her that in case one of those contacts was in the mob) and they had seen about getting them gigs. Smaller ones, at first, playing at open mic nights and weddings and some of the smaller festivals. They’d gotten a small following on Youtube and Twitter and they were just starting to really make a name for themselves when graduation had happened.

They hadn’t broken up the band. In fact, they’d gone to the same college but Nat had gotten enough scholarships to pay her way through university, Sam’s parents had saved enough for him to go even without him joining AF-ROTC, and Clint had taken out student loans. _Bucky’s_ parents lived paycheck to paycheck but they had taken one look at the cost of tuition and advised him not to take out loans that he would be paying off for the rest of his life. So he had enlisted.

That had been his first mistake.

The army had paid his way to go to college but he had never had the time to go to rehearsal. He hadn’t had the time to go out to dinner with the rest of the band and when he had floated the idea getting an apartment with Clint to his troop, one of the other enlisted had suggested they move in instead and somehow, he had let himself get talked into doing that instead.

He had no idea how Sam had managed to stay on top of his classes _and_ the band as well as ROTC when Bucky found himself pulling further and further away but by the time he had graduated, he spoke to Nat maybe once a month and the other two even less than that.

The two years between graduating and getting discharged had been some of the hardest of his life. He’d been stationed in places that almost never got reception so he’d only ever gotten to talk to his troopmates and honestly, he had kind of hated most of them. They had joined the army because “it was the right thing to do.” He called bullshit. The guys in his troop had been bullies and assholes and racists. Fuck, he had hated it there. He had hated _himself_ for giving into the delusion that it was okay for him to join the army just to pay for college, hated the economy for jacking the price of schooling so high that he hadn’t had a choice other than the army unless he wanted to go into debt for decades, hated the army for calling its employees heroes when they were just fucking murderers and invaders, hated just about everything.

It had been a relief almost when their convoy had been attacked, a relief that that would be the end of it. But it hadn’t been. He’d woken up in the hospital two weeks later missing an arm, his CO sitting by his bed long enough to tell him about his discharge and to hand him his paperwork before he ran off to the next poor soldier.

That had been two years ago. He’s jumped from job to job since then, never staying anywhere longer than a couple months, until Nat had called him two months ago with the job opportunity at Rogers Records. He still doesn’t know how she got him the interview—these kinds of job openings went quick—but he suspects she’d pulled one of her strings again. Sometimes, he resents her for it—he can find his own jobs, thank you very much—but the rest of the time, he remembers how much he likes eating and how expensive rent is in New York and he swallows his pride.

The worst part is the music, the fact that he can’t play anymore, the fact that he hasn’t composed a song in years, the fact that after Sam got back from his tour, the band started up again but he can’t play with them. He avoids their gigs and tells himself that he’s not vindictively pleased that they can’t find a lead guitarist and singer who’ll stick with them longer than a few weeks, that he’s not relieved every time they get passed over for a contract. It’s not a crime to want to be needed.

He just—

He wants—

Fuck, he misses playing.

* * *

“— _Barnes._ ”

He startles and looks up from the soundboard. The band’s song is apparently over as they’re just standing there, giving him concerned looks, and Logan is glaring at him after calling his name several times judging by his irritated tone.

“You okay there, bub?” Logan asks and wow, he must look positively _terrible_ if Logan is asking him if everything’s okay. Logan doesn’t usually give a shit about much of anything. He nods reassuringly and ignores the way his hand is shaking as he reaches for his coffee.

“Just lost in thought,” he mutters. Logan doesn’t really look like he believes him but he doesn’t press when Bucky changes the subject to, “How did they sound just now?”

Logan shrugs. “Could have been better. Morales was a little pitchy.”

He nods, flipping on the speaker. “Alright, let’s run it again from bar 26. Miles, you’re a little pitchy. Can you work on that?” he asks. Miles smiles brightly at him and gives him two enthusiastic thumbs up. “Great. Bar 26, whenever you’re ready.”

As the band starts to play again, counting in from an earlier bar, he sits back in his chair, wishing that this day was already over.


	3. No One Else Around

No matter what Bucky and Logan try to pretend, they’re both huge fucking suckers for big eyes and teenage crocodile tears and so when Spider-Verse still hadn’t wrapped their album by the time their session came to an end, despite what he’d told Logan that morning, he winds up letting them finish the last little bit instead of having to cut a song, which meant that they recorded over their lunch break _and_ got started late with the twins and it wasn’t fair to the twins to cut them short just because the band before them ran late, so he let them have their full recording time too even though he was more than ready to leave, which means that by the time he finally leaves work, he is both very hungry and very late to dinner.

He checks his phone as he’s walking through the lobby: twenty missed texts and two calls from Natasha, three texts from Clint, and only one from Sam:

 **From Sam:** _Ordered dakos for the table. Saved you a couple. Hurry up, Fuckface._

See, this is why Sam is probably his favorite even though it’s something that neither of them would ever, in a million years, admit. Sam doesn’t ever assume he’s running late on purpose, even when he is, and he doesn’t ever try to hurry him along. He just accepts that sometimes, Bucky is late and plans accordingly. He doesn’t know if that’s because Sam, with his sessions that sometimes run over, understands work holding him longer than expected or if, on the days that he just doesn’t want to be there, he understands everything Bucky is going through because he’s a vet himself. Either way, it’s a nice change from their teenage years when they really only got along because they were both friends with Nat.

Calliope’s is only a couple blocks away from Rogers Records so he decides he can walk, even though the temperature is dropping fast. It’s not yet cold enough that he needs gloves for the walk, though he’ll probably need them by the time they’re done with dinner—maybe Nat will let him borrow hers since she’s insane and drives everywhere in this city instead of taking the subway or a cab so she won’t need them—but he does end up digging his scarf out of his bag. He winds it around his neck as he walks, hurrying across the street as his phone chimes every couple of minutes with more impatient texts from Natasha.

Dinner together once a week has long been a standing tradition with the band, ever since they first met. When they were in high school, they’d always had Thursday dinner after practice at the house of whoever was hosting practice that day. They’d discuss how practice went, talk about their Friday night gig, go over lyrics of whatever song Bucky was currently working on if he was stuck with lyrics or wanted to show off or just wanted help on whatever chord he was having trouble with. As they’d gotten older, it had turned a little more social instead of strictly about the music. When they’d gone off to college, Bucky had stopped being able to attend as often though he’d always made a point of going at least once a month, only to have to stop entirely once he deployed. He knows that the band kept it up while he was gone though, and after he’d come back, he’d been invited to attend again despite no longer being able to play.

He’d asked Nat about it once, why he was still invited, and she had just shrugged and said simply, “You’re still our friend, aren’t you?” He’s never told her how much that meant to him—or that he appreciates her not inviting whichever lead singer they’ve added for that month.

Right now, their current flavor of the month is Calliope’s, a family-owned restaurant that’s been around for almost a hundred years. Supposedly, when they first opened, they served exclusively Greek fare but they’ve since expanded into Mediterranean food in general. Bucky likes the place a lot, likes the cozy, safe atmosphere, the fact that he’s always seated where he can see both the doors outside and to the kitchen at the same time, how they never play live music on nights when the band is going to be there because somehow, without him saying it, the owners picked up on how much he misses playing.

He opens the heavy wooden door to the restaurant and slips inside, forcing a smile that he doesn’t feel after such a long day to the hostess, who points him in the direction of Natasha, Sam, and Clint. Natasha spots him as he’s winding his way through the tables and nudges Clint up until he’s vacated the seat he was sitting in and moved into the one next to it.

“I was keeping your seat warm,” Clint tells him as Bucky sits down.

He knows perfectly well that Clint hasn’t figured out yet that Bucky prefers to be able to see the exits and therefore has no idea why he was kicked out of his seat but he mutters a half-hearted, “Thanks,” anyway. To Natasha, he manages a small, grateful smile. She looks proud of him and he can understand that since some days he can’t even manage that, it’s just that he wishes it didn’t come off as so condescending.

“You’re late,” Natasha states after Sam has shoved the plate of dakos in Bucky’s direction and he’s inhaled three of the four left for him.

“Band wrapped up late,” he explains, shrugging, and then stuffs the last dakos into his mouth.

Nat hisses disapprovingly and Clint says, “Just unprofessional.”

Bucky doesn’t really know what to say to that. He could have kicked Spider-Verse out at any time but he hadn’t. They’re just kids after all, kids in a big, terrifyingly competitive world that are trying to navigate things most kids won’t ever see in their entire lives. Can’t he cut them a little bit of slack for that?

Sam seems to get it though, because he says, “Hey, we don’t know what was going on. Let’s give ‘em a break.”

Nat shakes her head but then she’s always been the most focused out of the band, the one who pushes them hard to become a real band and not just a bunch of kids jamming around in their parents’ garages. “Still unprofessional.”

He doesn’t feel like arguing with her on this point. Once Nat’s made a judgment, she sticks to it, come hell or high water, and she’s excellent at arguing circles around people even when she’s wrong. He doesn’t care enough about a band she’s never going to meet to defend them.

“Hey, Bucky, speaking of, how was work?” Sam asks, deftly changing the subject.

“It was fine,” he grunts, same as he always does.

Clint groans. “You gotta give us more than that, dude. Every week, it’s the same old thing. ‘It’s fine.’ Come on, you’re the only one of us actually working at a record company. It can’t always be _fine._ ”

Bucky looks down at the empty plate of appetizers, wishing there were more so he could use them as an excuse for not answering. What does Clint want him to say? It’s the truth that he resents the people he’s recording, that he wants so badly to be the one in the booth instead that it hurts sometimes. But he knows that’s not what they want to hear. They want to hear what it’s like on the _inside_. They want to know what it’s like to actually be doing something with a record company instead of just playing for local bars, the way they’ve been doing since college, despite everyone saying they had the potential to go all the way.

He’s saved from having to answer when their waiter shows up to take their order and he abruptly realizes he hasn’t even looked at the menu. He flips through it quickly while everyone else is giving their order and then tells him, “Pastitsio, please.”

Once the waiter has left again, he asks, “How’s the new guy? Lincoln, right?” He hates acknowledging that the band has moved on without him but on the other hand, they can never keep a lead singer for longer than a month and he loves hearing about their problems with them.

Nat hums. “Hmm, pretty boy.”

“But don’t worry, Bucky, you’re very pretty too,” Sam reassures him.

“Thanks, Sam.”

“What about me?” Clint protests.

Sam makes a noncommittal noise.

“He is,” Nat starts to say and then stops. She grimaces. “He has _thoughts_.”

“Generally a good sign,” Bucky says, starting to warm up to the topic.

Clint shakes his head. “About the direction of the band. The music, what we play, that sort of thing. He wants us to be more…teenybopper.”

“Teenybopper,” Bucky says flatly, all amusement vanishing at the thought.

“That’s a bad way of putting it,” Sam argues. “He just wants to bring us up to date on music instead of sounding like a group from the eighties.”

“But that’s our draw,” Bucky points out. “That’s why people listen to us. We’re retro.”

He notices Nat exchanging a look with Sam and thinks back over what he said. Oh. He’d said— _implied_ —that he was still one of them. He winces internally. The band has never made a big deal about him not being able to perform with them still and they still treat him as one of their own—hell, they treat him more like the lead singer than they do their actual lead singers—but he still hates to act like he’s entitled to the band as belonging to him. He joined the army, he got himself hurt, he doesn’t deserve to still act like he’s one of them.

“Sorry,” he mutters but Clint doesn’t seem to notice as he just exclaims, “That’s what we said! But he said it’s old-fashioned so we’ve been practicing all new shit for the gig tomorrow.”

Bucky pauses in the middle of his self-recriminations. “He what?”

“He insisted we learn new songs,” Nat explains.

“Didn’t you put it up to a vote?”

“Sure,” Sam says. “But as soon as he realized we were gonna outvote him, he said he was the lead singer so he gets to make those decisions without talking about it to us.”

“We are using him for tomorrow’s gig and then we are firing him,” Natasha says decisively, nodding her head firmly. The other two both nod as well, agreeing with her, though Sam seems a little more hesitant. But that isn’t really surprising. Sam has always thought that they should give the new lead singers more time than a couple of weeks as a trial period before getting rid of them. He’s the only one of them to think that though and he once admitted to Bucky that he’s pretty sure even with the longer trial period, they all would’ve ended up being bad fits for the band anyway so he never puts up more than a token argument when Nat and Clint decide they’re done with whichever poor fucker they’ve hired this week.

Still, Bucky can’t help but turn toward Sam and ask, “You’re sure?”

Natasha suddenly looks thoughtful and he wonders if she’s ever taken the time to actually listen to Sam’s arguments against firing their lead singers so quickly. That used to be his job when he was with them, to make sure that everyone got heard even if they didn’t mind their voice being skipped.

Sam nods. “Even if I fully agreed with Lincoln’s ideas for the music, making the decision without us was just uncool.”

“ _Fully_ agreed?” Clint asks. “What do you mean fully agreed? None of you should agree.”

He and Sam start bickering about whether or not Lincoln has a point about updating their songs and Bucky wishes he could block out the argument. _He_ used to write all the songs for the band, not—well, whoever is currently writing their songs—and he _misses_ that.

As they’re bickering, Natasha leans over. She’s got that concerned look on her face again, the one Bucky hates. Every once in a while, she gets it in her head that he’s having a harder time of it than he is and she asks him if there’s anything he needs or something she can help with. He’d appreciate the offer if it didn’t make him feel like a child. He’s not _helpless_ ; there’s a lot that he can do for himself and he wishes she would acknowledge that instead of trying to take over and run his life the way she thinks it should be run.

“Are you okay?” she asks, low enough that neither Clint nor Sam notice.

Yep, he totally called it.

“I’m fine,” he tells her. Their waiter appears with their food and Bucky reminds himself to leave the guy a big tip as a thank you for inadvertently interrupting the awkward conversations of the night.

Unfortunately, however, Nat doesn’t seem content with his answer. She takes a bite of her food, chews and swallows, and then says, “Are you sure? You’ve been quiet tonight.”

“I’m always quiet,” he points out, which is true. Even before he joined the army, he’d tended to be a quiet person. The others just hadn’t noticed because Sam and Nat are both quiet as well.

She gives him a flat look. “Quieter than usual.”

He tries not to glare at her, reminding himself that her questions come from a place of concern. She cares about him so she’s worried about him. And it’s not that he resents that. It’s just that it feels like smothering sometimes, like she thinks she’s owed the state of wellbeing because she’s the one who helps him with the job searches and decorating his apartment and—

Okay, so maybe he owes her a lot and maybe he resents that she has her life together enough that she can take on his life and all its problems too.

“I’m fine, Natasha,” he tells her again. He doesn’t want to worry her. Things might not be great, he can admit that at least, but they’re also not as bad as she seems to think they are so she can stop worrying.

“Hmm,” she says and sits back in her chair. He thinks that’ll be the end of it but then a moment later, she asks, “How _is_ work?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Sam already asked me that.”

She waves her hand airily and scoffs. “That’s Sam.” The _this is me_ is implied.

“Work is fine. Same thing I told Sam.”

She scoffs again. He marvels at how she manages such a bitchy expression when her face is completely neutral. Must be one of those special Natasha trade secrets—like how she’d gotten so good at bass guitar when she’d never played an instrument other than a piano before that (he thinks she’s lying, that she’d been playing the bass all along but he likes to keep the story going because it irritates Sam to no end).

“I got you that job, don’t you think I deserve a little more than _fine?”_

“I know you know other people who work there, don’t you think you could find out from them?”

That doesn’t deter her at all. “How are your coworkers?”

“Fine.”

“I thought you said you didn’t like some of them.”

He sighs and puts down his fork. Sometimes, he’s willing to play along with her game but tonight it was already dark when he left work and he’s still hungry and his arm aches. He’s not in the mood.

“Nat,” he says firmly. “You’re probing and I don’t like it.”

As if on cue, Sam looks up from his conversation with Clint. “Nat,” he says pointedly. “Give it a rest.”

The two exchange significant looks that make Bucky wonder what they’ve been discussing when he’s not around. After a moment, Natasha sighs and ducks her head, conceding the point. Sam glances at Bucky, giving him a bare shadow of a wink. Bucky huffs out a laugh.

The rest of the night is spent discussing other things: Sam’s job at the VA, Nat’s irritation with the CEO she’s the secretary for, Clint teaching drum lessons to young kids. It’s nice and normal and as the evening wears on, he finds himself more and more unable to deal with it. They don’t face nearly the same problems that he does. They don’t deal with the stares and the random people thanking him for his service in the grocery store like he’d done this because he wanted to and not because he couldn’t afford an education otherwise. They don’t have to hop from job to job because people think they’re unable to do their job just because they’re missing a limb. Other than Sam, none of them have to deal with the VA and even he doesn’t have to deal with the disability side of it, which might actually be hell on earth. They just don’t know what it’s like.

“Hey, I gotta go,” he says abruptly, cutting Clint off in the middle of his rant about entitled parents.

“What?” Sam asks.

“Gotta go,” he says vaguely, jerking his thumb in the direction of the door. “Got work tomorrow, you know how it is.”

“Aw Bucky, no,” Clint protests.

Nat frowns. “Was it something we said?”

“No, I just—I gotta go.” He gathers up his bag, drops some money for his share of the bill on the table, and heads out, only remembering once he’s outside that he wanted to ask if Nat would lend him her gloves.

He shivers in the cold, wraps his scarf tighter around his neck, and sets off toward the subway station, jamming his frozen hand into his pockets in the hopes that it’ll keep him warm enough to reach the subway. It’s fine, he tells himself. He’s fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a reminder, I don't accept concrit


	4. Born into Light

In a small, dark alleyway in a little-known corner of Athens, there is a mural painted on a wall.

The mural is old, so old that no one knows exactly how long it’s been there, so old that the painting has changed styles with the centuries though no one is sure who paints over the mural each time it changes—and it must be that someone is painting it again because after all, a mural can’t change itself. These days, the mural is soft and stylized, the edges of the painted people blurred, their features indistinct, the background fading into the wall.

The only thing that has stayed the same about the mural is that there are nine people together in a room, some standing, some sitting, but all dressed in the linen chitons of ancient Greece. One is playing a lyre, another painting a picture, and still another peering through a telescope. Several are reading books and two are playing what looks like a pantomime game.

A breeze stirs a few leaves in the alley, kicking them up into a small whirlwind for a moment before dying back down. There’s a sense of hushed anticipation, like something is about to happen that has not happened for an age.

One of the nine figures in the painting, a tall, slim woman with red hair in a dark blue chiton, starts to glow. The breeze rushes by her and her hair ruffles. She breathes in deeply, taking in the smells of the city. Her nose wrinkles.

And then Calliope turns and steps out of the mural.

The glow surrounding her fades as she emerges from the wall. Her dress turns into an elegant white suit, crisp and untouched by the dirt in the alley. Calliope smiles to herself as she spins, taking in every inch of her body. She has freckles this time. She can feel them on her face. And her hair is a brighter red than it was the last time she left the mural. But none of that matters.

For the first time in nearly sixty years, she is _alive_.

“First things first,” she murmurs. “A name.”

Calliope may be the name she was born with but it’s not the only name she has. Like all of her siblings, Calliope has changed over the centuries. She is a woman today but three lifetimes ago, she was a man and not even for the first time, though it certainly isn’t her preferred gender. In her last life, she was called Virginia. In this one, she will be called—

“Pepper,” she decides. Pepper, to fit this modern age. Pepper, because of her hair. Yes, Pepper will do nicely.

With that decided, she moves on. She has eight other siblings and she’s sure that at least some of them are to be called out alongside her. She pats her jacket down, looking for the file she’s sure she was given. Ah, there it is. She pulls it out, watching as it shrinks down into something small and pocket-sized. If she’s remembering her lessons with Hephaestus correctly, this is called a phone and she turns it on just. Like. This. The phone chimes as the screen lights up, opening up into a list.

“Available Muses,” she murmurs and scans down the list, eyebrows raising higher and higher as she reads all nine names. The last time all nine of them were out and about was…was…nearly five hundred years ago if her memory isn’t faulty.

“A modern Renaissance indeed.”

She puts the phone back in her pocket and turns to the mural. Might as well start with the oldest. She scans the mural, gaze landing on a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-skinned man in a grey chiton: Polyhymnia.

Pepper snaps her fingers and Polyhymnia starts to glow. She waits until her brother has taken his first breath and then she reaches into the mural, fastens her fingers around his wrist, and pulls. Polyhymnia resists for a moment—understandable, her brother has had it harder than the rest of them over the centuries—but he still must come out.

“Polyhymnia,” she snaps.

Her brother’s eyes flash and he steps out of the mural himself. “Rhodey,” he informs her as his clothes change into a slate grey suit.

“What?”

“Rhodey. Euterpe’s decided it fits me better than _Polyhymnia_.”

“But that’s a last name! He couldn’t call you Jim?”

Rhodey gives her a look and she concedes the point. Euterpe has never once seen a name he couldn’t turn into a nickname. It’s a wonderfully endearing trait of his—as long as he’s giving his nicknames to other people. When he turns it on his siblings, it becomes hard to keep track of all the names he’s given them over the centuries.

“What am I the Muse of this time?” Rhodey asks her, sounding a little irritated. Pepper winces sympathetically. When they were born, Rhodey was named the Muse of Sacred Poetry but the practice has faded away over the centuries and these days, he might as well be the Muse of Whatever’s Left.

“Philosophy,” she tells him.

He looks thoughtful. “I could handle that,” he says eventually. “Who else are we calling out?”

“All of us.”

Rhodey looks as startled as she feels. All nine Muses being called out at a time is a momentous occasion, marked with creativity leaping forward, new artistic movements and dance and song. It’s a big deal to call out all the Nine Muses and honestly, Pepper hadn’t thought humanity was ready for another Renaissance.

“Then we’d better get started,” Rhodey says. “I expect we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

He isn’t wrong so she turns with him back to the mural and together, they snap their fingers. Two of their siblings begin to glow and they reach forward to bring Melpomene and Urania to life.

“I thought the humans weren’t funding space travel anymore,” Urania says derisively. “It’s all _corporate_.” She looks down at herself in her jeans and flannel shirt and continues, “I think I look like a Jane this time. What do you all think?”

“I think it’s fair plain is what I think,” Melpomene says. She’s wearing a flannel as well but her colors aren’t as bright as Jane’s and she’s wearing leggings instead of jeans.

“Well, what name are _you_ going by?”

“Valkyrie,” Melpomene announces proudly. “Like the warriors of old.”

“ _Valkyrie?_ ”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.” Jane turns to Pepper. “I want a do-over. Let me pick a new name.”

“Oh no,” Valkyrie says. “You already picked your name. You’re stuck with it now.”

Pepper ignores their bickering and works on bringing Thalia and Clio out of the mural. Thalia takes one look at the same grungy shirt and ripped jeans she was wearing back in the 70s when she was last pulled out of the mural and announces, “I’m going by Carol again.”

Clio looks at Carol as well and goes, “Yeah, same. I like Sharon. I’m not changing it.”

“You don’t want a hipper name?” Valkyrie asks.

“What, like Valkyrie?” Carol snarks.

“At least it sounds cool. You sound like an old lady.”

“I _am_ an old lady.” Carol thinks about it for a moment and adds, “But not as old as you.”

“Why you—”

Rhodey catches Valkyrie around the middle before she can launch herself at Carol. “Can’t you two wait until after we’ve gotten assignments?” he asks. Valkyrie looks like she’s going to shake her head no but Rhodey shakes her just a little and she subsides. “Thank you.”

Pepper eyes the three of them and waits for Rhodey to decide that he can let go of Valkyrie before she reaches in and brings out Erato, who has gone by Janet since the name first came into existence. Janet looks around at all of them, smooths down her yellow sundress, and says brightly, “Do we all have assignments then?”

She nods distractedly, too busy looking over at where Rhodey is hugging Euterpe to really pay Janet much attention. Euterpe, like Janet, has gone by some form of Anthony for the last couple hundred years and, true to form, when Rhodey realizes she’s watching them, he mouths the name, “Tony,” to her. She makes a mental note of it and mouths back, “Is he okay?”

Rhodey shrugs. Fair enough. Tony’s last assignment hadn’t exactly gone well. Janet might be the Muse of Love Poetry but Tony has always been the one likely to fall in love and when Pepper had seen young Mr. Steve Rogers, she’d known right away that he would steal, and ultimately break, Tony’s heart. It’s been almost eighty years since then and Tony still mopes around sometimes, humming the last song he ever sang for Steve—and sometimes that ridiculously irritating song from the show.

She turns away from the two, electing to give them some privacy—Tony and Rhodey have always been closer to each other than anyone else—and notices that someone has brought Terpsichore, the youngest of the nine Muses, out of the mural while she was distracted.

“Peter,” he tells her.

“Thank you, Peter. I like you the most.”

“That’s rude,” Carol informs her.

“No one asked you,” Valkyrie replies before Pepper can, sending them into another round of bickering.

She sighs and ignores them as she does a quick headcount, double checking that she’s got everyone: Rhodey, Tony, Peter, Carol, Valkyrie, Janet, Sharon, Jane, and of course, herself. That makes nine so they’re good to go.

“Alright, listen up!” she calls over the din. Immediately, everyone straightens up and turns to face her. See, _this_ is why she’s their leader. “You should all have your phones with your assignments on them in your pockets—”

“I have _pockets_ in this dress?” Janet says excitedly.

“But just in case, I’ll go over them now.” Pepper fishes her phone back out of her jacket and reads off, “Jane, I’ve got you with a politician in Washington. He’s the main one blocking the funding for NASA, used to dream of being an astronaut when he was younger—”

“And now he’s bitter,” Jane finishes. “Got it.” She smiles, waves at the others, and disappears into thin air.

“Peter, you’re with a dance company in Ukraine. They were pretty popular about ten years ago but it’s been dying out and they’re in need of some inspiration.” She nods at him as he disappears.

“Sharon—”

“A musical?” she asks, staring down at her phone. “Isn’t that more Tony’s thing?”

Pepper looks at her screen as well. “It says it’s historical.”

“Yeah but—”

“Hold on,” Janet says, tapping at her screen. “Looks like there’s a lot of controversy surrounding this one about the historical accuracy.”

Sharon’s expression clears. “Get it back on track. Can do.”

As she heads out, Pepper looks back down at her list. “Janet, I’ve got you with a boyband in South Korea.”

“Ooh exciting,” she squeals and salutes them all as she fades away.

Valkyrie and Carol are already gone by the time she turns to them, apparently having both checked their assignments while Pepper was busy directing the others. She turns back to Rhodey and Tony, both huddled around Tony’s phone. Tony looks devastated. Pepper’s heart skips a beat and she immediately checks her phone, wondering if his assignment is something terrible. But—no, it’s no different than anything he’s done before.

“You okay?” she asks, slipping her phone back into her pocket. “It’s a pretty typical assignment, isn’t it? The guitar player in New York?”

“Look who he’s working for,” Tony says softly, showing her his phone.

It takes her a moment to realize what she’s looking at and then she says, staring down at the smiling face of a much older Steve Rogers, “Oh.”

“He didn’t keep up with his art,” Tony says, gently tracing a finger over Steve’s face.

Pepper exchanges a careful look with Rhodey. It’s not that uncommon, when they’re given assignments outside of their usual purview, that they’ll inspire in the wrong direction and Tony has more staying power than most of them. Tony was supposed to help get the Captain America stage show up and running and keep Steve focused on his comics but it seems that Steve’s heart had stayed with Tony’s music instead.

“Tony,” Rhodey begins awkwardly.

“You don’t need to take that tone with me,” Tony says crossly. “I’m perfectly capable of doing my job.”

“No one said you weren’t,” Pepper says carefully.

“I’m not going to go after Steve. I know he lived a—a perfectly happy life without me. I’m not hung up on him.”

She exchanges another look with Rhodey. They both know that that’s not entirely true but they also both know that Tony would never sacrifice his job for the sake of his emotions. He loves what he does too much to let his feelings get in the way. Truthfully, Steve will likely never even know that Tony is there, let alone that he’s the same man he once knew and fell in love with. If anything, Tony is far more likely to get over Steve, just like he has ever other person he developed feelings for, as soon as he lays eyes on his actual assignment and then he’ll fall in that one and the cycle will begin all over again and Pepper will have to listen to _another_ century’s worth of moping, only this time it’ll be about Mr. Barnes.

 _Well,_ she thinks philosophically, _at least he’ll stop singing “The Star Spangled Man with a Plan.”_

Anything is better than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're not sure what to write for a comment, here's a handy emoji key you could use!
> 
> ❤ = you wish you could kudos again
> 
> 😭 = I got you right in the feels
> 
> 🔥 = this was so hot!
> 
> 🐰 = it’s so fluffy!


	5. Dawn Breaks Across the Sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a note here: Tony makes a reference to being Natasha at some point in his early life. I'm headcanoning the Muses as being similar to the Doctor from Doctor Who, capable of changing gender as they need to but not necessarily using they/them pronouns. I did a lot of research into this but as I am cis, it's possible that I may have accidentally written something offensive. If I did, please let me know so that I can fix it

“You got any fun plans for the weekend?”

Logan’s gruff question breaks into Bucky’s reverie, shaking him away from his depressing memories of when he’d been able to rock out in his parents’ garage. He looks over at him with furrowed brows, silently asking him to repeat the question. Logan shakes his head fondly.

“Fun plans, for the weekend,” he repeats. “You got any?”

Bucky isn’t sure what gave Logan the impression that he’s a “fun plans” kind of guy. He thinks about his empty fridge, the lack of people coming and going in his apartment, the sad set of furniture with only a minimal amount of decorations to give it any life at all, and he bites back a bitter snort of unamused laughter. Once, he’d been the life of the party. When he’d been in high school, he’d have friends over every weekend and a party anytime his parents had been gone. He hasn’t done that since before he left on deployment though, first too busy and now unable to muster up the enthusiasm and energy necessary to have people over. If he goes over to someone else’s house, Nat or Clint or Sam’s, he can leave whenever he wants. If they all come over to his place though, he’s on their timetable and he _knows_ he’ll get tired of them long before they get tired of him.

“No,” he says simply. “Nothing fun.” Then, because his ma taught him it’s important to be polite, “You?”

Logan nods. “Leaving the munchkin with her grandparents for the weekend and going upstate with my partners.”

That’s right, Bucky remembers. Logan has two partners: Jean and some skinny guy that Bucky can’t remember the name of if he tried. “Oh yeah?” he asks vaguely, trying to remember Logan’s other partner’s name.

“Yep. Jeannie’s parents rented a cabin up near one of the lakes but her mom caught a cold. Offered it to us instead. Jeannie said I could do some fishing. It’ll be nice to get back out there.”

Bucky tries to picture Logan—flannel-wearing, cigar-smoking Logan—sitting on a dock in one of those ridiculous hats with a fishing pole and a beer. The image comes surprisingly easy, although he has to amend it by giving Logan one of his cigars. There’s just something _right_ about Logan among the pine trees in the countryside, though it’s not an image that he would have ever thought of before.

“And what about—” he starts and then hesitates, realizing that he still can’t think of the other guy.

“Scott?” Logan asks. He snickers. “Poor city boy. Couldn’t be more disappointed. He offered to take Marie for the weekend but she wanted to go with her grandparents.”

“How _is_ Marie?” Bucky asks politely. He’d like to just get out of this conversation—few things are worse than realizing even his quiet, grumpy, asshole of a work partner has more of a life than he does—but he was raised better than that. With any luck, Logan will decide that he hates the small talk and leave.

Unfortunately, he remembers as soon as the words leave his mouth that Logan, normally so reticent and scowling, absolutely loves talking about his adopted daughter. They’ve only worked together for two months and he’s already learned far more about Marie than he would have ever wanted to know. It’s sweet that Logan loves his daughter so much, really it is, but on a night like tonight, when Bucky is tired and cold and the stump of his arm hurts, he’d much have just gone home instead.

Logan’s eyes light up and he starts telling him about Marie’s classes and how she’s got straight-A’s for the third semester in a row and—Bucky tunes out right around there, his eyes glazing over. There’s no food in the apartment, he remembers thinking earlier, just moldy spaghetti sauce and freezer burnt tater tots. He’ll need to either grab takeout or go grocery shopping on the way home. He thinks about the meager takeout offerings in the area around his apartment and resigns himself to going grocery shopping. He hates that chore. There’s just something about the fluorescent lighting and the muted music that makes his depression so much worse. Not for the first time, he wishes that the grocers near his apartment had opened up a delivery option instead of him having to physically go to the store but they’re an old store owned by an elderly couple who love people and are holding out hope that grocery delivery is just a fad.

Logan pauses in his recitation of Marie’s academic achievements and Bucky seizes his chance. He pulls on his coat and scarf, tosses away the last dregs of the coffee he’d gotten at lunch, and slings his messenger bag over a shoulder. “I’d love to stay and chat some more,” he says as he stands. “But I’ve got to go to the grocery store if I want dinner tonight.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to be there during evening rush,” Logan agrees, eyeing Bucky’s arm. He knows that Logan means it in the best way, that Logan knows how much Bucky hates it when people stare, but he still squirms uncomfortably.

“Right,” he says and jerks a thumb at the door. “I’m gonna head out.”

“See you on Monday,” Logan says. Bucky’s almost to the door when Logan continues, “Hey, let those friends of yours drag you out for another dinner. It’s good for you.”

He pauses, hand on the doorknob. “You saw that?”

“Date night with Jeannie. She likes Greek.”

Bucky slowly turns around to see Logan watching him carefully. “Thanks for worrying—”

“Bucky.” He shuts up. “Just think about it, that’s all I’m saying.”

That’s all he’s been doing for two years. “Right,” he says bitterly, thinking about Nat’s probing and Sam’s comments about the last singer that he’d kind of liked and Clint’s occasionally insensitive jokes. “Thanks.” He yanks the door open and escapes into the hall.

* * *

Tony remembers every single person he’s ever been a Muse for, man, woman, and neither. He remembers the ones he fell in love with: Athenaeus when he had been Antony and Sappho when he had been Natasha and Schubert and Handel and Smyth and a hundred others beside. The Muse of Music gets called out far more often than most of his other siblings; after all, there has always been and will always be music in the world. Tony loves his work, he loves the ability he has to inspire people, but being called out so often just means that he has more opportunities to fall in love with his beloved musicians and fall in love, he does.

Janet calls him a romantic soul. Valkyrie calls him a soft heart. Tony thinks he lies somewhere in the middle. And really now, is it such a bad thing to fall in love?

He’s worried though, worried that it is taking him longer and longer to get over each lost love, though he doesn’t think that any of his siblings have noticed yet. There had been a time once when the pantheon had been so powerful that Tony had been able to split himself into multiple Muses, aiding and inspiring several people at a time. Back then, he had fallen in love quickly and easily and gotten over it just as quickly and easily. These days, he can spend years with a single person and he’s noticed each time, that his love for them seems deeper and stronger; the time it takes to move on grows.

Steve had been the last of them. He was supposed to be a quick assignment: make sure that the reluctant Captain America has _some_ modicum of enthusiasm for the show meant to inspire the nation and help usher in the age of the modern Broadway musical. Instead, he had fallen hard and fast. Even as they spent most of their time arguing, he had loved him, and now he’s spent the last seventy years missing him.

 _It’s odd_ , he thinks. He’d still been pining right up until he had arrived in the city and then it had been like a switch had flipped. The feelings are still there, and he’ll have to deal with them eventually, but they’re muted, like they’re locked behind a glass door.

It doesn’t bode well for how he’ll react to Mr. James Buchanan Barnes.

Part of being a Muse is an inner magic that gives them everything they’ll need in order to do their job. Peter’s body changes as it needs for different dance styles, Jane automatically knows how the names of the stars have changed, Tony’s voice changes pitch and style with the changing music fads. If his feelings for Steve have suddenly muted when they were still strong just a few days ago, he can only assume that it’s because Barnes will evoke some sort of strong emotion in him.

He hopes not but, as he glances down at his phone and then back up at the figure in the tattered old coat, a worn scarf around his neck and his hand jammed deep in his pocket, he doubts it.

Barnes has those eyes: those sad, expressive, _beautiful_ eyes that Tony falls for every time.

Damn it.

* * *

Bucky hates the grocery store with a passion so strong he suspects he must have once been left in one because why else would he hate the grocery store? He pauses on the threshold, psyching himself up to go in. The thing about this particular grocers is, it’s owned by a little old Southern couple who never quite managed to figure out that New Yorkers don’t like to talk so he ends up having to spill his life story to them at the front of the store so that they don’t think he’s being rude when all he really wants is to get home before the milk spoils.

“Bucky, hi, sweet pea!” one of the owners, Sheila Kirby, croons, ushering him inside. “You caught us right on time! We were just getting ready to close but for you, we’ll stay open as long as you like.”

Bucky catches a glimpse of the cashier over Sheila’s shoulder giving him a murderous glare and he takes that to mean that he absolutely should not take as long as he likes.

“It’s fine,” he mutters. “Just grabbing some stuff for dinner.”

“Fun! What are you thinking about making?”

 _Frozen waffles_. “A pizza.”

“What a great idea! We’ve got a great selection of pizzas, a new company opened up just last week, gluten-free you know but I suppose some people go for that and—”

“Sheila,” the cashier interrupts. “Can you help me? I think the register froze again.”

Sheila lets go of his arm, a smile frozen on her face. “Again?”

“Yep.”

Sheila heads on over and Bucky gives the cashier a pathetically grateful smile that she echoes sympathetically. As soon as Sheila is engrossed with the register, he scurries off into the depths of the store, hoping that he doesn’t also end up running into Jack, Sheila’s husband who’s even more talkative than she is. It’s a good thing the register is broken, he decides as he heads straight for the produce aisle. It breaks nearly every time he comes and takes a good twenty to thirty minutes to fix, which gives him more than enough time to grab most of the groceries he needs instead of having to make another trip tomorrow morning when the store opens again, possibly running the risk of seeing people that he’d rather avoid.

The door whooshes open behind him, the bell above tinkling a little as someone follows him inside. Sheila doesn’t greet them the way she greeted Bucky and he winces. Poor guy, Sheila must not like them or else she would have said hello. To be fair, he wouldn’t wish Sheila’s affections on anyone but she sometimes offers special discounts to the people she likes and that’s something that he has shamelessly taken advantage of in the past. Buying groceries can be hard when you’re jumping from job to job and the VA refuses to give you the benefits you qualify for.

Well, it’s not his problem anyway and he doesn’t feel like talking to anyone so he puts on his headphones, pulls up the hood on his coat, and grabs a basket. Kirby’s is a small store with less than fifteen aisles but it still has most of the basics so it doesn’t take him too long to grab the fruits and veggies that he needs to make sure he doesn’t get scurvy, a couple cans of soup to get him through the next few days, the frozen pizza he’d told Sheila he would get, and then he heads for the frozen waffles.

It’s weird. Sometimes, when his music is quiet, he thinks he hears footsteps behind him but when he turns, there’s no one there. He’s halfway down the bread aisle when he finally takes his headphones off, hoping to catch whoever it is. But while he keeps hearing the footsteps, just a beat behind him like an impossible echo, he can’t manage to catch whoever it is.

“Very funny,” he mutters to himself.

The music in the store switches over to something old-timey, like it usually does when the Kirbys are getting ready to close up the store for the night (they say it’s because it makes them want to dance while they’re going through the closing duties). But the music tonight is just as weird as the mysterious footsteps. It’s still swing music, just like it always is, but instead of the Andrews sisters, it’s sung by a man, a soft, sweet tenor that Bucky almost wants to wrap himself up in.

_Forget about the blues tonight_

_Sweet thing_

_Forget about the rules tonight_

_Sweet thing_

_I wanna dance with you_

_Until the sun comes creepin’ through_

_I wanna dance with you_

_I won’t stop pleasin’ you_

Surprisingly, he finds himself humming along as he finishes up the last of his grocery shopping. He doesn’t normally like swing music but there’s something almost—almost addictive about this song, something that draws him in and leaves him wanting more.

_Honey for awhile_

_Give a boy a chance to show some style_

_If you’ve got no love to spare_

_Tell me lies_

_I don’t care_

He could’ve sworn that he had never heard this song before and yet the lyrics are sitting right there in his mind and he sings along with the unknown singer—he certainly must not have been popular or else Bucky would have recognized him, swing music or not—as they move back into the chorus.

_You better believe that I_

_I know some moves that we gotta try_

_Cause there is nothing I would rather do_

He props open the freezer door with the stump of his arm and reaches in for the last box of Eggo waffles, humming along with the chorus, but before he can grab the box, another hand shoots out and grabs the box.

Bucky blinks at the space where the box should be. _Guess that means I really will be eating pizza tonight_. Distantly, it registers in his mind that the music has cut out right in the middle of the chorus, only to pick right back up with the Andrews Sisters like it had never been anything else. _Huh, that’s weird._ Then he realizes just what that empty space means and he turns, furious and fully anticipating on giving this thief a piece of his mind.

Except—

Except the thief is _gorgeous_ , all fluffy brown curls and sparkling brown eyes framed by long lashes and mischievous expression that Bucky suddenly wants to kiss off his face. He pauses, shocked by that startling realization. He hasn’t been interested in anyone since he got out of the hospital two years ago. Where had this sudden attraction come from?

His gaze falls on the box of Eggos the thief is clutching to his chest and he abruptly remembers just why he’s here. He scowls, his glare only deepening when the thief just grins at him.

“That’s mine,” he states.

“I don’t see your name on it.”

He—what—the _audacity!_ “It’s a box of Eggos, of course it doesn’t have my name on it!”

“Then it’s not yours, is it?” the thief replies, that wicked little grin still lurking in the corners of his full lips.

“I was reaching for it.”

“So was I and I got there first so clearly, it’s mine.”

Bucky gapes at him and then indicates his left shoulder. “I had to—” The freezer door slams shut, startling him, and he jumps. “—prop the door open,” he finishes after a moment.

For a moment, there’s a spark of sympathy in the thief’s eyes and he starts to dare to hope. But just as quickly as it appeared, the spark is gone again. The thief grins again, throws a wink at him, and says, “That sounds like a you problem.”

“Why—you— _hmph_ —”

The thief darts in and presses a kiss to his lips, startling him quiet. Bucky inhales sharply, not sure whether he’s going to kiss him back or push him away, and the thief curls an arm around his neck, holding him there as he kisses him more deeply. It’s a good kiss, sweet and lovely and all those other adjectives that Bucky can’t really think of right now because he’s having the life kissed out of him.

Slowly, the thief pulls away from him, nuzzling one last, soft kiss against his mouth before he pulls away entirely. Bucky blinks his eyes back open, not sure when he closed them. The thief looks as dazed as Bucky feels, inhaling shakily.

“Oh,” the thief whispers. “You _are_ trouble, aren’t you?”

And then he’s gone, as though he’d never even been there at all.

“Hey, wait!” Bucky exclaims. He runs forward, certain that there’s no way the thief just _disappeared_ , he must have just gone around the corner. “You can’t just…”

There’s no one there.

“…do that,” he finishes. That’s so _weird_. He spends a couple minutes looking for the thief but can’t find him anywhere and when he next catches the eye of the cashier, she’s glaring at him again, so he gives up and heads to the front, accepting the defeat.

But then, when he starts unloading the food from his basket, there’s the box of Eggos, sitting innocuously in his basket like it had always been there. He frowns down at it, certain that the thief had still been holding onto the waffles when he’d disappeared.

“That other guy who was in here,” he starts hesitantly.

The cashier looks at him like he’s lost his mind. “You’re the only one who’s been here all night,” she tells him.

What?

“What?”

She frowns at him. “I said—”

“No, I heard you,” he interrupts. “I—really?”

“ _Yes_.”

That’s—huh. This day just keeps getting weirder and weirder, doesn’t it? He grabs his bags and heads back out, barely noticing that he’s singing that song again.

_Forget about the blues tonight_

_Sweet thing_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A handy emoji key for you for those who don't know what to say!  
> ❤ = you wish you could kudos again  
> 😭 = I got you right in the feels  
> 🔥 = this was so hot!  
> 🐰 = it’s so fluffy!


	6. Have to Believe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter is a little shorter than usual. i'm really struggling with depression right now and it's been hard to find the motivation to write

Monday morning and he blinks, staring at the scraps of paper strewn around his apartment, at the lyrics scribbled everywhere he can find space, crossed out and rewritten again and again and again. He picks one of the pieces of paper up, one that doesn’t have as many lines scoring the paper, wondering what he had written. The previous days are a haze of songwriting and music, a haze that he barely remembers. He hasn’t written a song in _years_ , since before he left the army. There’s no way whatever he wrote was any good.

_Building your dream_

_Has to start now_

_There’s no other road to take_

_You won’t make a mistake_

_I’ll be guiding you_

It actually isn’t half bad. Bucky frowns and runs his thumb across the paper. He can’t spot any sheet music in the apartment but the song plays in his mind as clearly as if he’d written the notes down along with the lyrics. Absentmindedly, he reaches for his guitar, wondering if he can play the song on his guitar as easily as it plays in his head. His hand has already closed on the neck of the guitar before he stops, suddenly remembering that he can’t play.

As though burned, he lets go of the guitar and draws his hand back, clutching it to his chest. He can’t believe—he was going to—no no no nonononononono—

Desperate for something to distract him from the rapidly approaching panic attack, he seizes another one of the scraps of paper, glancing at the lyrics on that one.

_You have to believe we are magic_

_Nothing can stand in our way_

He snorts and tosses the paper away. Nothing can stand in his way? Yeah, right. _Everything_ is standing in his way. He can’t believe he ever used to think that he was destined to make music. If that was true…well, he definitely wouldn’t be down an arm, now would he?

He glances around the clutter of the room, wondering how on earth he managed to make so much mess in only two days. Had he even taken breaks to eat? He can’t spot any plates anywhere, and maybe he had taken the time to actually wash and put away the dishes, but he doubts it. When he was younger, he used to be completely focused when he was songwriting. A little thing like dishes wouldn’t have stopped him.

Bucky looks back down at the lyrics scattered around the room. He doesn’t have any use for them, not when he can’t even play the song, but maybe if he took it to the band? He’s not sure how he feels about someone else playing his songs (a not insignificant factor into why he never attends the band’s performances) but it really is a pretty great song. It deserves to be out there.

He shoots a quick text off to Sam: _You guys in the market for a new song?_

Fuck, it’s gonna take him hours to clean up this mess, isn’t it? Trying to figure out which lyrics go in which order and which ones can be thrown out, rounding up all the empty, dried-out pens… It’s a damn shame it’s Monday. If it was any later in the week, he knows he’d be able to justify leaving it until the weekend but as it is, he can’t talk away living in this mess for a week, however much he might want to. When he’d first gotten back from the war, he’d had all sorts of problems with picking up after himself, too depressed to even consider the concept. He had let it get it so bad, he had needed to have that first apartment completely renovated when he eventually moved out, what with the walls and ceiling practically covered in mold and all. It had been a huge financial drain on someone who couldn’t hold a steady job and he’d told himself that he’d never let it get that bad again. Problem is, it’s always easier to let himself lapse than it is to get himself going again.

Something in the piles of papers catches his eye, something that isn’t lyrics. He fishes it out, frowning when he sees that it’s a rough sketch of the thief from the grocery store. Bucky doesn’t count himself as a great artist, and he would never say that what he’d apparently drawn at some point during the weekend is anything more than passable, but it’s still very clearly the thief.

And now that he’s thinking about it, he can think of several times over the last few days that the thief has been on his mind. It just doesn’t make any sense. It was an odd encounter, yes, but it’s New York, for fuck’s sake. Odd encounters happen every day. There’s no reason at all that he’s so hung up on a random person who kissed him in a grocery store.

His phone chimes and he opens it to Sam’s response: _Glad to hear you’re writing again! You know, you’re making—_

Bucky scowls and turns the phone off. He doesn’t need to read the rest of the message to know that Sam is wrong. This—this _obsession_ —isn’t progress like Sam clearly thinks.

It’s just madness.

* * *

“How was your weekend?” Logan grunts as he walks through the door.

Bucky starts to say the usual “Good, how was yours?” and then stops before he can finish saying “good.”

Logan narrows his eyes. “Your weekend was goo?”

“No, sorry,” Bucky says, hanging up his coat. Before he can think better of it, he adds, “It was—it was weird, actually.”

“Weird? Weird how?”

Bucky drops heavily into his chair, spins it to face Logan, and leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “So get this,” he says. “I go to the grocery store on Friday night. Place is empty, I go to grab the last box of waffles, and this guy comes up, takes ‘em out of my hand, and kisses me. I mean, how weird is that?”

“Was he cute?” Logan asks.

“Yeah—what does that matter?” Bucky asks, glaring at him. “He was a complete stranger.”

“You don’t seem upset enough to be thinking about like assault,” Logan points out. “So I thought maybe he was cute.”

“What, because ugliness is a standard of how likely you are to commit assault?” Bucky asks dryly.

“Didn’t say it made sense.”

Bucky shrugs. “Yeah, he was cute. But he also stole the box of waffles out of my hand.”

“So it was a distraction. You’re overthinking this, bub.”

“Don’t get me wrong, the kiss was weird enough. But that’s not actually the weirdest part of the whole night.”

“And that is…?”

“I go to the cash register, found the box of waffles the guy stole from me, and then the cashier tells me I’m the only person who’s been in all night. Has no idea what I’m even talking about when I mention the thief.”

Logan’s frown deepens. “That _is_ weird,” he admits.

“And then I spent the rest of the weekend writing a song.”

“What’s so weird about that? Other than I didn’t know you wrote songs.”

“I don’t! I haven’t in years, since before I joined the army, really. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“That you’re writing songs again?” Logan says doubtfully. He shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe your muse came back.”

Bucky barks out a laugh. “Yeah, like the guy in the grocery store is any kind of muse.”

“You wrote a song, didn’t you?”

Yeah, he did. And he apparently wrote it thinking of the guy who kissed him, though he has no recollection of the inspiration or writing the song itself. But that’s—no. No, people don’t just get _inspired_ by random thieves in grocery stores, especially not thieves who steal the last box of waffles from someone who was clearly going to grab it.

Logan is eyeing him strangely. Logan isn’t really a fidgety kind of guy but there’s little else that could explain how he’s tapping his finger against the soundboard.

“What?” Bucky asks.

“Nothing, just—you look different.”

He kind of _feels_ different, lighter maybe, looser than he’s been since before he lost his arm. “Different how?”

“Good different,” Logan reassures him, giving him a tight smile only slightly incongruous with his tone. “Like whatever you wrote helped.”

Huh.

Well, that’s not too bad, he supposes.

Suddenly, it all gets to be too much for him: this conversation, him being _different_ , the song, and most of all, the memory of that kiss. He turns away, grabbing the album case they’re supposed to be recording today.

“So what is this anyway?” he asks gruffly.

“Some indie group, The Nine Sisters, I think.”

But Bucky isn’t listening anymore, too distracted by the model on the cover of the album. He flips it around, nearly thrusting it into Logan’s face. “Do you know who this is?” he demands.

Logan looks at it and back up at him, brow furrowing. “A guy in a toga?”

“This is the guy who kissed me in the grocery store!”

Logan sits up, leaning forward to take a closer look. “Really?” he asks. “Huh, he is kinda cute, if you like that kind of twink look.”

Bucky bites back a comment about Scott being about as much of a twink as he can get and another one about the guy in the grocery store not even remotely being a twink, but he supposes those big brown eyes can throw people off. He turns the case back around, taking in the fluffy brown hair and the bright red toga that brings out the color of his lips.

“I’ll be right back,” he says absently.

“What? Where are you going?”

“I’m gonna go check with Photography. They had to have hired him from _somewhere_ , right?”

* * *

But, as it turns out, Photography has no idea who the model is.

“Look, Mr. Barnes,” Parker, the one who took the picture, says. “I was taking pictures of the pagoda in the park, the one with the Grecian columns, and this guy just shows up in one of the photos. I don’t know where he came from or what his name is. I couldn’t even track him down to pay him. One minute, he was there; the next, he was gone. It was like—”

“—Magic,” Bucky finishes. He sighs, not sure why he’s even worrying about this. It was one moment in a grocery store, that was it. There’s absolutely no reason for the guy to still be on his mind three days later. “Thanks for trying.”

He heads out, thoughtfully tapping the album case against his mouth. He might not be able to explain why the guy has caught his interest but he _has_ and—shit, he’s being creepy, isn’t he?

“Gotta leave him alone,” Bucky mutters to himself. “You can’t just go stalking a guy cause he was cute and kissed you.” He thinks about it and then adds, “Wasn’t even that good of a kiss anyway.”

_Sure, Buck, you just keep telling yourself that._

He turns a corner, absently stepping out of the way of someone going in the opposite direction.

Then he stops.

No…

There’s _no way_.

He turns back around, barely catching a glimpse of fluffy brown curls and a trim waist as the owner of both rounds a corner.

“Hey, wait!” he calls, breaking into a light jog to try to catch up. “Hey, you! Hold on a second!”

The guy—and Bucky is convinced this is the same guy, unless he’s got a twin—stops, throwing a wink over his shoulder. “Who, me?” he calls back down the hallway and then he turns the corner.

Bucky is only a few steps behind him but by the time he too rounds the corner, the guy is long gone—of course he is. But there’s someone else there, someone that Bucky runs right into, knocking them both to the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A handy emoji key for you for those who don't know what to say!  
> ❤ = you wish you could kudos again  
> 😭 = I got you right in the feels  
> 🔥 = this was so hot!  
> 🐰 = it’s so fluffy!


	7. Promise in the Air

Bucky’s hand shoots out to grab the guy before either of them topple over. “Shit!” he exclaims, righting them both. “I am so sorry, didn’t see you there, I was—”

“—in a hurry,” the man says. “I know, I know. Maybe watch where you’re going next time, huh, kid?”

As they both start to calm down, Bucky gets a better look at the guy he almost knocked over and he moans. “Aw shit, really, I am so sorry, sir. If I’d known it was you…” He trails off. Nothing for it now. He recognizes the guy he ran into; he sees his old, lined face and wispy white hair on the pictures of the Board of Directors in the hallway as he walks to his recording booth, and it’s definitely not looking good for him.

“If you’d known it was me, what?” Steve Rogers, the head of the whole damn company, asks him. He only looks amused, not angry, other than maybe a little irritated but Bucky knows how this goes. “You look upset, kid. Something bothering you?”

He laughs humorlessly. “Well, usually, you run into the CEO, you get fired, don’t you?”

Rogers blinks at him twice, then bursts into laughter as well, though he definitely doesn’t sound as upset as Bucky is. “Why would I do that? It’s not like I’m hurt. You didn’t hurt anyone _else_ , so why should it matter? Besides, if I can’t take a hit, even at my age, I think I’ve got bigger problems than firing you.”

Slowly, Bucky starts to realize that he’s maybe not going to get fired. It would be a first. He did something like this at his first job after coming home from deployment, only then he was running from a backfiring car and lost in a flashback, and he’d been out on his ass only a couple minutes later.

“You’re not upset,” he repeats, voice lilting up at the end almost like it’s a question but not quite.

“Maybe just, you know, watch where you’re going,” Rogers recommends. He places one hand on Bucky’s shoulder, steadying himself, and sticks out his other hand. “Steve Rogers. Call me Steve, everyone else certainly does, although I’m pretty sure my assistant calls me a menace when she thinks I’m not listening.”

“Only pretty sure, sir?” Bucky asks before he can stop himself.

Steve chuckles. “Well, I’m old and the hearing’s starting to go, much as I might like it to stay. And don’t think I didn’t miss you forgetting to tell me _your_ name, kid.”

Bucky jumps. “Oh, right, sorry about that, sir—”

“Steve.”

“Right, Steve. Bucky Barnes.”

“Parents got a knack for alliteration there, huh, Bucky?”

“Nah, my first name is actually James,” he explains, relaxing into everything now that he’s not worried about his job. “But there were six other James’ in my grade and my middle name is Buchanan so _that’s_ out, and then my best friend recommended Bucky and it stuck.”

Steve whistles lowly. “Must have been a helluva friend for you to keep that name all the way through high school.”

“Yeah, I got made fun of for it a couple times—more than a couple, really—but it fits.”

“Hmm.” Steve nods thoughtfully and then glances down the hallway towards the elevators, one of which seems to be coming down to this floor. “That’ll be my assistant with today’s paperwork. Bucky, what say you and I go out and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee?”

Bucky’s mind blanks. Steve Rogers— _the_ Steve Rogers—head of the company, wants to buy him a cup of coffee. “Oh no sir,” he says hurriedly. “I couldn’t do that. I should be getting back to work and—”

“You’re looking upset. You could tell me all about whatever had you running around corners like a maniac.”

“You’re a perfect stranger,” Bucky points out. “And anyway, _I_ bumped into _you_. Shouldn’t I be buying you the cup of coffee?”

“Kid, I got more money than Midas. Let me spend some of it, huh? As for me being a perfect stranger, sometimes the best person to tell something to is a stranger. Come on, best coffeeshop in town is right around the corner.”

Bucky glances back in the direction of his recording booth. “You’re sure?” he asks doubtfully.

“You’ll be doing me a favor. I’m taking a page out of an old friend’s book and skipping out on a board meeting.”

Bucky laughs. “Yeah, alright then.”

* * *

When they’re both seated with their drinks, Steve says, “Go on, Bucky. Tell me what’s eatin’ you.”

Bucky drums his fingers on the table for one moment, wondering if he’s really about to go for it, and then decides _fuck it_. “So it’s like this. There’s this guy—”

“Always is, isn’t there.”

He stops, blinks, and looks curiously at Steve. Steve winks at him. “I know what it’s like,” Steve says. “I was there once too. All my Anthony had to do was smile at me and I’d do anything he asked.”

Bucky smiles to himself. “That’s kind of sweet.”

Steve huffs, his own smile turning sad, the expression in his eyes going thoughtful. Bucky wonders if maybe Anthony passed away at some point. He’s never bothered to google Steve Rogers, other than a cursory search back when he was going through the interview process, so he doesn’t know much about him, but he doesn’t remember seeing anything about a spouse. Maybe, though, he likes to keep Anthony private.

“So,” Steve prompts eventually. “There’s this guy.”

“Right,” Bucky says. “So I ran into this guy at the grocery store on Friday—”

“What’s a young man like you doing at a grocery store on a Friday night?” Steve interrupts. “Shouldn’t you be out, letting loose or whatever you kids call it these days?”

Bucky snorts. “Ain’t a whole lotta people linin’ up to dance with a guy with one arm.”

He doesn’t mean to make Steve glance at his empty sleeve but that’s exactly what happens. Uncomfortable, Bucky glances away and out the window. The shop just a regular old coffeeshop, nothing special about it from the outside (and honestly the same kind of overpriced crap that he can find at every other coffeeshop on the inside) but the window overlooks one of the Broadway theaters, which is kind of cool.

“Yeah, I can understand that,” Steve says softly. Bucky looks back at him and swallows a laugh. Steve might look old now but Bucky would be willing to bet that he was one hell of a looker when he was younger. “Don’t laugh. I used to be quite the shrimp when I was your age. No one wants to dance with a guy that might accidentally step on.”

“Yeah? So what changed?”

Steve shrugs. “Fresh air. Got away from the city for a bit, that helped. Gained some confidence, does wonders even if you’re still a little shrimp. Stopped picking every fight I could.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah, I was a scrappy little guy. Never saw a fight I could walk away from.” He turns pensive, thumb rubbing at his bottom lip. “And then the war. I didn’t fight at first, sure wanted to—I don’t like bullies, never have, and the Nazis were some of the worst ones I’ve ever seen—but my past health problems put a stop to that real quick. Spent a few years working on the Captain America show—”

“No way,” Bucky exclaims. “You serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

“I was the biggest Captain America fan when I was a kid. My granddad had a copy of the only stage show ever filmed, right before the first actor left the show. I used to watch it every time I was at his house, had all the comics, I even listened to the radio drama.”

“Oh, you listened to that?” Steve sounds delighted and Bucky is as pleased as punch to grin and nod.

“It was my favorite thing to talk about when I was growing up. You were really involved with that?”

“A bit. Anthony was the real mastermind behind the whole thing. I was just there to look pretty, at least until I got myself drafted.” Steve shakes himself just a little, startling Bucky out of their recollections. “But listen to me, talking about myself and the good old days again! We’re supposed to be talking about you! You and that guy at the grocery store—who is he? Old classmate, friend, boyfriend?”

“None of the above,” Bucky says. He takes a sip of his coffee, rapidly going cold. “Never met him before. But I run into him, he grabs me, _kisses_ me, and disappears.”

Steve laughs. “Well, what’s so weird about that? You’re a handsome guy. Hand or no hand, people should be lining up to kiss you.”

“What’s weird about it is I spent all weekend thinking about him. I even wrote a _song_. I haven’t written one of those in years.”

“You write songs?” Steve asks, sounding surprised. He leans forward, clasping his hands together. “You play too?”

Bucky looks incredulously at him.

“Don’t knock it; I’m always on the lookout for new talent,” Steve tells him. “So do you?”

He grimaces and takes another sip of his coffee to try to stave off any thoughts of the desert. It might be shitty, overpriced coffee but it’s still miles above what his troop had had and even the change in taste can help with the flashbacks. “Not anymore. Used to play with a band but then I lost the arm overseas, never picked up the guitar again.”

“You could—”

“Yeah, I know. I could learn to play again one-handed, I’ve heard it before.” He rubs at his shoulder. “I can’t do it; I’ve tried. My, uh, the therapist I used to see said I had a mental block about the whole thing.”

“What do you think?” Steve asks, those clear blue eyes boring into him like they can see straight into his soul.

He shrugs, looking away from that piercing gaze. “Doesn’t matter what I think. Haven’t been able to learn to play so I don’t.”

“But you miss it.”

Something about the way Steve says it makes him look back at him, makes him tell the truth. “Yeah, I do.”

Steve nods a little. “Well, you ever pick it up again, let me know. I’ll give you and your band an audition.”

“Really?” Bucky asks. “You don’t even know if we’re any good.”

“Call it an old performer’s intuition.” Steve sits back in the booth, stretching an arm out along the back. “So, Bucky, tell me something: you write a song, you’re thinking about this guy, but I’m not hearing anything weird here. Could look on Twitter and find half a dozen tweets saying the same thing without even trying.”

“I found him on an album cover this morning when I came into work, but no one seems to know who he is. I mean, it’s crazy, right?”

“Maybe not,” Steve says thoughtfully. “Sounds like you’ve got yourself a muse, really.”

“A muse,” Bucky states flatly.

Steve holds his hands out expansively. “How does that sound crazier than anything else? Kid, all good musicians had one. You’re in good company. I’ll bet you anything that the person on that album cover only _looks_ like the guy on your mind. You’ve been thinking about him all weekend, it makes sense that you’d imagine him on an album cover.”

“You really think so?”

“Sure! But here’s the thing about muses, kid.” Steve leans forward again, pointing a finger right at Bucky’s chest. “You gotta watch your heart around them. Muses, they’re only supposed to be temporary. Can’t let yourself get hung up on one. Don’t dwell, it’ll only lead to heartbreak. Now, tell me you’ll stop looking for yours. Let yourself write a couple songs, get some good inspiration out of him, and then move on. You’re probably never gonna see him again.”

It’s good, solid advice and Bucky nods. It makes sense. So why does he get the feeling it’s not going to be that easy? “Alright,” he agrees, swallowing down his unease. “I’ll stop worrying about it.”


	8. Bring All Your Dreams Alive

He doesn’t—stop worrying, that is. He _does_ manage to stop looking around every corner for the guy but he doesn’t seem able to stop himself from dwelling on meeting him in the grocery store. It’s kind of ruining his social life—or it would be, if he even had one. As it is, he’s turned down every single dinner invitation Nat and Sam and Clint have sent his way in the last two weeks in favor of churning out song after song after song in every spare moment of time that he gets. He knows—he _knows_ —that Nat will be coming after him soon if he doesn’t respond but he can’t bear to lose his inspiration. She’ll do that thing she always does, knock on the door and barge into his apartment without waiting for an answer and then she’ll see the mess of papers and lyrics and notes strewn across his floor and decide, just like everyone else who’s given up on him, that Bucky Barnes has officially gone round the bend.

And then he’ll be alone.

But he can’t stop himself.

For the first time in years, he has inspiration, he _wants_ to write, and he can’t make himself stop. He’s got four new songs already (plus a fifth that he’s just starting on), three of them only have lyrics right now but the other one, the first one, the one that he’s tentatively calling _Magic_ , has notes set down on sheet music and everything. He can’t play the song to verify that it actually sounds halfway decent but he’s never needed to be able to play anyway. He’s always been able to listen to his songs in his head; he had just _preferred_ playing along on his guitar as he wrote.

Bucky glances down at his latest song as he shrugs on his jacket, getting ready to head out to work. This one is the newest of them and he thinks it might end up a duet. He’s been separating each new song into areas of his apartment, even if they wind up a complete mess in their assigned room, and this one—he thinks he might call it _Suddenly_ —is currently in his bedroom since every other room in the apartment is taken up with one of the other songs.

He’s only got a few lines down on a sticky note right now but he sings those two lines softly to himself as he finishes getting dressed, feeling more alive than he has in years.

_He walks in and I’m suddenly a hero_

_I’m taking in, my hopes begin to rise_

And then, clear as day, as though there’s someone, someone soft and sweet but entirely male and just the kind of person Bucky had imagined singing the duet with, singing the next lines, lines he hasn’t even written yet but fit right in with what he’s already got down.

_Look at me, can’t you tell I’d be so_

_Thrilled to see the message in your eyes_

“Huh,” Bucky murmurs to himself. It’s an odd moment to be sure, but he thinks about what Steve had said about muses, and decides that he must have been imagining what the guy from the grocery store would sound like when he sings and resolves to put the weird moment out of his mind. Well, it isn’t like they’re bad lines and he could sure use them.

“Hope you don’t mind me writing these down,” he says as he reaches for his pencil, telling himself these are the last lines he’ll write before he dashes out the door. He can’t be late for work, especially not after he already knocked over the head of the company.

“Why would I mind?” he hears an amused voice respond. “That’s why I sang them.”

Bucky pauses, slowly looks around the room, but as he expected, he sees no one. “Great, Buck,” he mutters. “You’re definitely officially losing it.”

Light laughter follows him out the door, floating on a nonexistent breeze, and he firmly decides that he’s only imagining it because that guy is on his mind. He’s not going crazy and there’s not some secretive, invisible person hiding out in his apartment.

It’s not fair. Things like this don’t ever happen to _Clint._

* * *

The day passes much the same as all days do. He’s working with Luis today, which is definitely not one of his favorite things to do, but they’re recording a full orchestra today for some pop singer who decided she wanted to try her hand at something more than just a band backing her up. It’s a gutsy move, Bucky muses, not least because she’ll never be able to perform the song on tour, not as it’s meant to be performed, so she had better hope it’s not one that people will be clamoring for.

Anyway, they’re recording a full orchestra and Luis is much better with instrumentals than either Scott or Logan are. Bucky has never really understood how _he_ manages to be put on these orchestral recording sessions but he thinks maybe it might be because he’s better at blending together the instrumentals with the vocals.

These kinds of recording sessions tend to take all day. It is, after all, a lot harder to make sure that fifty to a hundred people are all playing the right thing at the right time than it is to make sure of only one person or band. Unfortunately, Bucky’s part of the job—adding the vocals to the orchestral track—doesn’t come into play until after the orchestra is finished so he often ends up working late these nights to get everything finished before the next day. He’s not really supposed to—they’re unpaid hours since he never bothers to put in for overtime—and he could easily get the job done the next day instead, but after a full day with Luis chattering away in his ear, he almost _needs_ those quiet hours where it’s just him and the custodial staff in the building, putting together the tracks in a way that blends together and sounds absolutely incredible.

The orchestra finally wraps up about twenty minutes before the end of the day and Bucky breathes a sigh of relief. He’d been starting to get worried they would have to do this all over again tomorrow, he would have to work after the session tomorrow to get the sound mixing completed, and he would lose out on those quiet hours that he loves so much. But they’re done now and Luis doesn’t complain when Bucky says he’s going to stick around a little to play around a little more with the vocal and instrumental tracks so he’s good to go.

He’d thought earlier that this was a gutsy move for the pop singer and he’s realizing now just how gutsy it really is because, if he’s being honest with himself, there’s a reason this particular singer always performs with a band instead of an orchestra. As her voice is, put together with the orchestral tracks, it doesn’t sound…great, to put it delicately. He’s definitely going to have to do a lot of mixing to get it to sound perfect and he thinks even then, it still might sound a little off, but what else can he do?

A singer with a lot of vocal fry, like this one, just isn’t going to sound right with an orchestra backing her up no matter what he does to the tracks. He just hopes she accepts this as her mistake and doesn’t demand they redo all of the recordings. He’s had that happen before and it’s always a pain and it always sets them behind schedule.

The hours pass. He gets hungry and orders takeout at the anticipation of a long night trying to fix what he can with this girl’s voice, wincing at the steep fees of the delivery service. Bucky remembers a time growing up when delivery was the cost of the food, taxes, and a tip for the delivery boy, not these fees stacked upon fees in the name of “service.” Justin, the nighttime security guard, brings him his food about thirty minutes later, bag still sealed, which is a surprise; Justin often steals some of his food as his “payment” for delivering Bucky’s food all the way from the front desk. The guard stumbles through his usual thanks-for-your-service spiel that he always gives, unctuous tones tripping over the words Bucky has heard a thousand times before because clearly the only reason someone would be missing an arm is because they’re ex-military.

As Justin is leaving, the door cracked open behind him just like he always leaves it (Bucky sometimes wonders if Justin has never heard of closing a door before), Bucky hears the first strains of music, drifting from somewhere down the hall.

“Hey, Justin,” he calls before the guard can walk out of earshot. A moment later, Justin pokes his head around the door. “Is someone else recording tonight?”

Justin gives him a puzzled look. “You’re the only one I know who stays this late.”

“Then who’s—” And then he hears the lyrics, _familiar_ lyrics, lyrics Bucky hasn’t shown to anyone, sung in a soft, breathy voice that he remembers from his dreams.

_Come take my hand_

_You should know me_

_I’ve always been in your mind_

_You know I will be kind_

_I’ll be guiding you_

If it’s who he thinks it is, Bucky would be willing to bet Justin can’t even hear the music the way he can. “Never mind. Just thought I heard someone singing. Must’ve been working here too long.”

He forces a chuckle and Justin smiles uneasily. “Place can be kind of spooky after dark,” Justin says.

“True of most places though,” Bucky replies and waves Justin off. “I’ll let you get back to your job. Probably be here another couple hours.”

He waits until Justin is gone before he creeps out of his sound booth and down the hall, still clutching his bag of food. The music gets louder as he gets closer, the lyrics becoming clearer.

_You have to believe we are magic_

_Nothing can stand in our way_

_You have to believe we are magic_

_Don't let your aim ever stray_

_And if all your hopes survive_

_Destiny will arrive_

_I'll bring all your dreams alive_

_For you_

_I'll bring all your dreams alive_

_For you_

He pushes open the door to the booth, not at all surprised to see the guy from the grocery store standing next to the microphone, eyes closed as he sings. There’s a rapturous expression on his face, like the only thing he has ever wanted to do, the only thing he _will_ ever want to do is sing.

Bucky gets the feeling.

There’s no one in the booth itself, the backup music (sounding just as he imagined it would) coming from a recording instead of an actual band, and he very much doubts that this is meant to be a real recording session. No, he more suspects that this is deliberately meant to bring him here, which is why he doesn’t feel bad interrupting the song by stating, “You.”

Without opening his eyes, his muse says, “Me.”

_From where I stand_

_You are home free_

_The planets align so rare_

_There’s promise in the air_

_And I’m guiding you_

“You know, I should be surprised you know this song but somehow I’m just not,” Bucky tells him, settling down in the booth. This must be Scott’s regular booth, he decides. The chair is softer than the ones in his and Logan’s booth.

His muse smiles faintly.

“You might be surprised to hear this,” Bucky says eventually, “but I’ve been looking for you for a while.”

His muse opens his eyes, cocking his head to one side curiously. “Why would I be surprised?”

Bucky shrugs. “Because I’d never seen you before in my life before a couple weeks ago and now I can’t escape you.”

“Isn’t that how it always goes though?” his muse asks. “You learn about a new concept and now it’s all over the news?”

He thinks about it and then shakes his head. “Still a little too coincidental to me.”

“Sounds like you don’t believe in it.”

“I’d say I don’t but,” he gestures at the guy, “you’re standin’ right here. Hard not to believe in that.”

There’s a light, airy laugh and Bucky finds himself grinning. It’s impossible not to with the sound of that laughter. It just invites him to share in the mirth.

“You’re right,” his muse says, still chuckling. “It’s too coincidental. Clearly someone must be setting us up.”

“Aw hey now, I didn’t say that.”

“Well, I don’t know what else to tell you then, Bucky.”

He frowns, hating the suspicion rising in him but that’s the main takeaway he got from the army: be suspicious of everything. “How do you know my name?”

“Because I can read minds,” the guy says mysteriously. For a moment, Bucky even believes him but then the guy’s face breaks into an easy smile. “It’s on your sound booth door down the hall.”

Oh. He’d forgotten about that.

“Can I have your name?” he asks, deciding to move on from the awkward moment.

“Tony.”

It’s such an ordinary name for someone who seems so extraordinary and yet…it suits him. “Tony,” Bucky repeats, rolling his name around his tongue. “Tony.” He likes it. “Hey, so I got a question for you, it’s been botherin’ me for the last few weeks. Why did you kiss me that night?”

“I don’t know, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Bucky tells himself he’s not disappointed. “Oh.”

Tony is watching him shrewdly. All of a sudden, he moves, heading right for the door. He steps into the sound booth and settles himself on the other chair, crossing his legs under himself and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Bucky eyes him, biting back a grin at the AC/DC sweatshirt Tony is wearing. It seems so incongruous with the way Tony sounds, with the way his big brown eyes blink at him, and yet, just like his name, it completely suits him.

“Wasn’t it a good idea?” Tony asks him. “You got a song out of it.”

“Several,” Bucky admits.

“But this one is for me,” Tony says confidently, and Bucky wonders how he knows that. Still, it’s true and he doesn’t bother denying it, just nodding instead. “I like it. It’s very you. Who are you going to play it for?”

The question is abrupt, startling Bucky out of his perusal of the way Tony’s jeans stretch over his thighs. “What do you mean?”

“You wrote it, don’t you want it to be performed?”

He scoffs. “Maybe you haven’t noticed it but I’m not performing much of anything right now.” He gestures at his empty sleeve. “Can’t really play anything like that.”

He looks down at his lap where the bag of food is still waiting for him. The fries are probably cold by now, he realizes, and he grimaces. Nothing worse than cold fries. He lets himself get lost in the misery of the moment: cold fries, his arm, a song that’s just dying to be performed but won’t be, leastways not by him.

And then there’s a small hand on his knee, warm through his pants. He looks up to see Tony only inches away, an oddly intense expression in his eyes.

“What if I said I could help with that?”


	9. The Wheels are in Motion

Bucky looks dubiously up at the sign they’ve stopped under. “H. Aestus’s Garage and Parts,” he reads out loud. He glances over at Tony beside him, bouncing on his toes. “You sure this is the right place? Looks more like a place I’d take my car to than to see about my arm.”

“Oh I’m sure,” Tony assures him. “Heff’s the best mechanic I know, and that’s saying something, cause I’m no slouch myself.”

“Really?” That surprises him. He’s only known Tony for a few short days, not counting all the time he’s spent thinking about him, but that pretty much contradicts everything he knows about the brunet. Tony constantly has a song on the tip of his tongue, much like Bucky himself does, and if they’re in the car, he’s always tapping along to the radio. In truth, Tony reminds Bucky much more of himself—a musician—than he does of a—

“Yep. Before this, I was a blacksmith.”

“Those still _exist?_ ”

Tony frowns, a little moue of displeasure twisting his mouth. It makes Bucky wonder what he’s said wrong to make Tony look like that. “Yes,” Tony says eventually, but he doesn’t sound certain about it, and Bucky gives him an odd look. It shouldn’t have been as hard to answer as it seemingly was.

After another strangely quiet moment, Tony shakes his head and smiles brightly up at Bucky. “Come on,” he says cheerfully, odd mood apparently over. He marches to the door and holds it open to usher Bucky through. “No use lollygagging outside when there’s work to be done.”

“Lollygagging,” Bucky muses. “Now _there’s_ a word that hasn’t been heard since the 40s.”

Tony’s smile freezes on his face. It looks like one of those fake smiles that celebrities are always giving the press when something is brought up that they don’t want to talk about, like their latest divorce or fashion faux pass. “It hasn’t?”

Bucky abruptly realizes that he hates this fake smile. He wants the real one back, the one that lights up every room Tony’s in, the one that smells like sunshine and rainbows, if those had a smell. It’s strange. They haven’t known each other for very long and yet—and yet, sometimes Bucky feels like he’s known Tony his whole life. More than that, he _wants_ to know Tony. He hasn’t wanted to know much about anyone in the last few years but Tony is … mesmerizing. He captured Bucky’s attention the moment they first met and held it ever since, and strangely enough, Bucky doesn’t see anything wrong with that.

“It’s fine,” he says, hoping to get that smile back. “We should bring more of that 40s slang back, ain’t that right, doll?” He finishes the sentence with a cheeky wink, surprising even himself with it, but then again, Tony seems to bring out that side in him.

No matter how ridiculous he feels, it does the trick. Tony’s bright smile is back, and it’s with a pep in his step that Bucky walks inside.

The front office is shockingly nice, considering the grimy exterior of the shop. The décor is done up in gleaming silver and matte black, and every inch of it is spotless. The couches look like the sort of uncomfortable leather that’s impossibly to sit in, but when Bucky runs his hand along the back, it sinks in like the couch is made of the plushest material known to man.

“Wow,” he murmurs to himself.

“Hi, Aunt Dite!” Tony exclaims, bounding over to the woman sitting behind the desk.

Bucky follows his gaze, jaw dropping as he catches sight of the woman, though calling her a woman is a little like calling Mount Everest a hill. He hadn’t noticed her when he walked in, though he doesn’t know how he missed her because she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. Her skin is a rich umber brown that looks satiny to the touch, even though he would never bother he to ask, her hair a deep black that reminds him of the night sky, and her eyes—he could write a thousand songs to the beauty of those dark eyes. His fingers itch for a pen and a paper, lyric after lyric springing to mind.

The woman giggles, calling to mind the light tinkling of a babbling brook. “You’re sweet,” she says, as though she read his mind. Bucky wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that she had. Tony mysteriously appears just when Bucky needs him the most, his head has been full of songs after years of sitting empty, this woman is most definitely the most beautiful woman in the world, perhaps real magic wouldn’t be such a shock after all.

“Well, he’s going to be useless,” Tony sighs, tsking as he takes in the sight of Bucky dumbfounded.

“My apologies, dear nephew of mine,” the woman says.

It’s like a switch in Bucky’s mind. One moment, he’s composing sonnets to the beauty of this woman—something he’s never done before, feeling it to be rather creepy—and the next, he can function again. The woman is just as beautiful as she was before, but it’s as though a light has been dimmed.

“Sorry about that,” he says confusedly. “Don’t know what came over me.”

“I do,” Tony mutters.

“What?”

“What?” Tony asks innocently. “Bucky, this is my Aunt Dite. Aunt Dite, this is Bucky. I was telling you about him when I called yesterday?”

“Oh that’s right,” Aunt Dite says and smiles indulgently at Bucky. “Call me Aunt Dite. Tony, darling boy, you didn’t say he was so handsome!” She glances over at Tony, her smile immediately fading away. “Tony…”

“I know,” Tony interrupts, casting a warning look at Bucky like she’s about to say something she shouldn’t in front of him. “I know better.”

“Do you? Because we all know what happened with—”

“It’s different.” There’s a strange note of desperation in Tony’s voice, one that Bucky doesn’t like. He feels like he’s missing half a conversation here, all these references to something that’s happened in the past. The most he can gather is that something—or someone—hurt Tony a long time ago and Aunt Dite is afraid that Bucky will do the same thing. He doesn’t know how to reassure her that he won’t. He doesn’t even know if he has the _power_ to hurt Tony.

Except…

 _“You are trouble,”_ Tony had told him that first night, looking scared and rapturous all at once.

He opens his mouth—to reassure her, maybe; to refute that he can hurt Tony, perhaps—but before he can, Tony says, “Uncle Heff’s here, right? We can go on back?”

“Of course! He’ll probably welcome your interruption. That robot of yours has been driving him crazy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tony says loftily. “DUM-E is a darling.”

“You just keep telling yourself that,” Aunt Dite tells them. She presses a button under the desk and the door to the left of the desk swings open. “Go on through. He’s been dying to show off what he whipped up.”

As Tony ushers him into the back hallway, Bucky asks quietly, “You build robots?”

“Sometimes,” Tony says with a careless shrug. “When I’m not working.”

“And, uh, what is it that you do for work?” He’s been wondering this since they met actually. Tony keeps incredibly strange hours and always seems to be available for Bucky when he texts, so he’s not sure what Tony does to pass the time.

To his surprise, Tony is hesitant for a moment before he cautiously says, “Philanthropy.”

“Philanthropy,” Bucky repeats dubiously. It’s not that he doesn’t believe Tony. It’s just that—well, Tony dresses in ripped jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers. Not exactly the clothes of someone rich enough that their main job is philanthropy. And then there’s the weird way Tony had hesitated before answering, like he was trying to come up with something.

Tony grins at him. “Of a sort.”

With that, Tony opens the back door and pushes Bucky into—into a _wonderland_. He’d been expecting just a regular old garage, not _this_. There’s tiny robots zooming through the air, holographic displays suspended above the tables, and what looks like a giant pincer on struts trundling towards them.

“No, you stupid bot!” a gruff voice shouts from the back of the workshop. “Get back here!”

“DUM-E, I presume?” Bucky asks.

“Yep,” Tony says fondly as the robot twirls in circles in front of them, like a dog showing off for its owner. “He’s a little bit useless but it irritates the hell out of Uncle Heff and Aunt Dite when I call him perfect, so I do.” He bends over, cooing over the robot while he strokes its claw. “Aren’t you a dummy? Yes, you are; yes, you are. But you should probably get back to Uncle Heff before he donates you to the community college. Yes, you know he would, and I’d agree with him, yep.”

Bucky laughs delightedly as the robot somehow manages to droop, letting out a sad beep before it turns around and trundles back towards the darkened end of the workshop.

“He’s got a personality?”

“Of course he does,” Tony says, sounding affronted. He waves his hands at DUM-E. “He’s a primitive AI. Why wouldn’t I code him with a personality?”

“’Cept it’s the worst personality you could have chosen,” that same gruff voice says. “Damn thing’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

“Hey, Uncle Heff,” Tony says brightly, seemingly not at all bothered by Uncle Heff’s assessment of his robot.

Bucky turns toward the owner of the voice, only to nearly take a step back before he stops himself. For as beautiful as Aunt Dite is, the apparent Uncle Heff is ugly. He looks like the dime-a-dozen guys found at rural gas stations, the ones that are killing themselves by chewing tobacco and spit on the ground in public and see nothing wrong with spewing hate for all to hear. And yet, his eyes are as kind as Aunt Dite’s are and he wraps Tony up in a tight hug without asking and despite his harsh words towards DUM-E, he pats it kindly on the claw before waving it on toward the back.

“Now then, you must be Bucky,” Uncle Heff says, turning to face him. He casts a clinical look at Bucky’s empty sleeve. “I’ll need you to take that shirt off so I can get a good look at what we’re working with.”

Bucky absolutely does not want to do that but Tony gives him a reassuring nod, so he grudgingly slips the shirt off, folds it, and passes it over to Tony to hold. Uncle Heff’s gaze turns sorrowful and he brushes an air-light fingertip over the scars.

“It’s a right damn shame what happened to you,” he murmurs. “Humans have always picked fights whenever they could but it ain’t right to drag everyone else into a fight between two people. Can see why you’d want to cover it up. I was the same way for a long time, ‘cept for me, it was my ma’s handiwork that left the scars.”

The heartbreakingly matter of fact way in which Uncle Heff admits to his mother’s abuse keeps Bucky from saying anything about the strange sentence that had preceded it. He’s beginning to expect the oddness that surrounds Tony and the people he associates with but he still didn’t expect Uncle Heff to talk about humans as though he isn’t one.

“I’ve got an arm for you and I think you’ll like it,” Uncle Heff says abruptly, clapping his hands together. “It’s made out of vibranium—rarest metal on earth. Most people don’t even know it exists. DUM-E!”

The robot comes zooming up, holding a beautiful black and gold paneled arm in its claw. “Wow,” Bucky breathes, reaching out his hand to touch it but stopping at the last moment. It almost seems too beautiful to touch.

“No, no, it’s yours,” Uncle Heff says. “Touch it all you like.”

Reverently, Bucky takes the arm, weighing it in his hand. “It’s so light,” he marvels.

“Yep, part of what makes vibranium so special. It’ll feel just like your other arm.”

“How does it recharge?”

“Similar to one of those fancy hybrid cars. Dependin’ on how you use it, it’ll charge on its own. So if you’re doin’ heavy things—liftin’ weights, playin’ that guitar Tony tells me you’re so good at—it’ll drain the battery. If you’re doin’ something simple like cookin’ a meal, it’ll recharge. It’s not likely, but if it drains all the way, it’s got a port right there on the inside of the wrist. You take the arm off—oh yeah, nearly forgot about that. The arm connects to your shoulder with nanobots so it’ll look seamless. If you want to take the arm off, you stroke the seam with three fingers and it’ll pop right off. You want to put it back on, just hold the arm up to your shoulder, the bots’ll do the rest. Now, you take the arm off if it needs to charge, pop open the panel on the wrist and plug it in. Charges in about an hour and you’re good to go.”

“Wow,” Bucky whispers again, but regretfully he hands the arm back to DUM-E. He admittedly doesn’t know much about prosthetics, but this seems pretty top of the line to him. Definitely more than he can afford.

“Kid, what’re you doing?” Uncle Heff asks, frowning.

“This is a gorgeous piece of work, really, but I can’t—”

“It’s a gift,” Tony says softly.

“No,” he says, shaking his head violently. “I don’t want your pity. I should—”

“Look at it this way,” Uncle Heff interrupts, laying a thick hand on Tony’s shoulder to stop him from saying anything. “You’re gettin’ my name out there again. I haven’t had people call on me in a very long time. You don’t know how much this will mean for me.”

“But—”

“Trust me, kid. Even if all you do is tell one person who made that arm, it’ll be worth more’n its weight in gold.”

Bucky looks back at the arm. He wants it, badly, but… “You’re sure?”

“Hundred percent positive.”

DUM-E offers the arm back out to him and this time, Bucky takes it.


	10. Never Thought I Could Feel This Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not an entirely realistic depiction of therapy but let's be honest with ourselves here: this is a story about fictional characters in which one of them is a Muse from Greek mythology. None of us are here for realism anyway

“Uh, hi,” Bucky says, knocking on the door to the office. His metal hand makes a sharper rapping noise than his other hand would have, and he bites back a smile. He’s still getting used to the new arm after receiving it last week, but how it looks, how it _feels_ , is something really amazing. “Dr. Grey?”

Dr. Grey, a tall, slender redhead in a beautifully tailored navy suit, looks up from her desk and smiles at him. “James Barnes, right?” she asks. “Come on in.” She stands up and holds out her hand. Bucky steps into the office and takes her hand, pumping it twice before letting go, just like how his dad taught him. “Go ahead, sit down.”

Bucky takes a moment to look around the office. It’s warm and homey, with dark paneled walls, leather furniture, a waterfall feature in one corner, and the scent of vanilla piping in from an unseen aerosolizer. He instantly likes it. Tony had recommended this place from the list Sam had given him after Bucky had called him up, asking about therapists to see. Tony had been delighted by his choice to get a therapist, but Sam even more so. Bucky doesn’t know why he’d been so surprised by that. Sam is his friend, he’s known that Bucky was struggling, so why wouldn’t he be happy to hear that Bucky is searching out the help he needs?

But it had surprised him. He supposes he kind of thought that he just sort of… existed on the fringes of the band’s friendship these days, something to put up with instead of actually care about. After all, _he’s_ put _them_ aside for so long.

Dr. Grey is looking at him shrewdly, like she knows every thought that’s going through his head. And who knows? Maybe she does. Maybe his experiences aren’t as unique as he thought. Maybe she knows exactly what he’s thinking because she’s heard it all before. But he tells himself he can’t think like that. If he lets himself start thinking along those lines, he’ll end up thinking that he doesn’t have a right to be here and he’ll just talk himself out of coming here.

“So James,” Dr. Grey begins.

“Bucky.”

She looks up from the notepad sitting in front of her, clearly startled. “Sorry?”

“Everyone just calls me Bucky,” he corrects. “Haven’t gone by James since I was a kid, ‘cept for when my Ma’s angry at me.”

She smiles at him, like she knows just what he’s talking about. “Bucky then. Do you want to talk about what brings you here?”

“Not really,” he admits. “But—uh—a friend of mine—he’s a therapist too—he said he couldn’t see me when I said I was looking for one, cause of ethical reasons, so he sent me the names of a couple docs. I saw that you do a lot of work with vets and…” He trails off, not sure how to explain the sense of _rightness_ he’d felt when he saw her name on the list, not least because Tony had been looking over his shoulder, tapped her name, and said, “I like that one. Her name sounds kind.”

“I do work a lot with veterans,” Dr. Grey agrees. “I didn’t always, but one of my partners is a veteran. He used to complain that the only therapists in New York who knew how to work with veterans were either with the VA, which he didn’t like after his experiences with the government, or were too far out of his price range, so I changed focus. But I was hoping you could tell me why you _wanted_ a therapist.”

Bucky looks down at his hands (and doesn’t he love that he can say that now?) twisting in his lap. “I, um, two years ago, me and my convoy got blown up overseas. We got some bad intel, ended up getting ambushed, I was the only survivor.” He holds up his metal hand, wiggling the fingers. “Lost my arm, didn’t qualify for a prosthetic cause the VA’s a piece of shit—” Dr. Grey laughs softly and he grins crookedly at her. “Ended up bouncin’ from job to job. I had a therapist for a while, but it’s like with your partner. They were with the VA and I hated that they were a part of the same system that sent me overseas to get shot at in the first place. And I dunno, I guess I thought—” He takes a deep breath, runs his fingers through his hair, and takes the plunge. “I guess I thought maybe I didn’t deserve to get help. Just by being over there, I was tearin’ apart people’s lives. I did some pretty awful things while I was there. I know I joined up cause I needed to pay for college but… I still joined. Can’t see as how I got anything other than what I deserved.”

“What changed your mind?” Dr. Grey asks gently.

He shrugs. “Can’t say it did. My—uh—my friends keep saying I do deserve help, it’s the system that put me here, but it’s been hard to believe ‘em. Then I met this guy, and I know it sounds crazy, but he says he wants to see me happy, no other motive. I dunno, maybe it just took me meeting someone new to make me want to try. With my friends, they’re kind of required to support me, you know? But Tony’s not like that. He hooked me up with his uncle, who makes prosthetics, he’s helping me pick up the guitar again. Is it so crazy that I want to be able to smile at him without feeling guilty about smiling?”

“I don’t think it’s crazy at all.”

He huffs, “You’re not gonna tell me I should be wantin’ to come to therapy for me, not someone else?”

“I’d like us to get to that stage eventually, yes, but whatever brought you here, whatever gets you through the _door_ , that’s a start. Even that little bit is progress.”

There’s that word again. _Progress._ But somehow, when Dr. Grey says it, it doesn’t bother him nearly as much as when Sam says it. Like when she says it, it doesn’t mean that she’s wondering what took him so long to get to this point (even if he _knows_ that’s not what Sam means by it), but instead that she’s proud of him that he took even this tiny step, no matter how long it might have taken him.

Again, as though she’s reading his mind, she adds, “There’s no need to be ashamed in taking some time to ask for help. Some people never make it to this point. You can be happy that you’re here at all.”

He likes the way she said that: he _can_ be happy, not he _should_. He’s been told that before, that he _should_ be happy that he came home, that he _should_ be happy he only lost an arm instead of his life. It always makes him feel guiltier still on top of all the guilt that he feels about his part in the military scheme. But this, saying that he _can_ be happy… Maybe it should bother him that she’s all but giving him permission, but up until this point, no one has responded like that. It’s always been about why wasn’t he happy, didn’t he know how lucky he was, couldn’t he see that his unhappiness was bothering other people?

He likes this. He can be happy or he can decide not to be, but either way, it’s not an obligation anymore.

* * *

Almost a month later and Dr. Grey still says he’s making progress even though it doesn’t feel like he is. “It’ll be hard,” she tells him. “You’ll wonder why you waited so long to come and it’ll make you feel like you’re backsliding. But keep pushing through it anyways, keep coming to our sessions, we’ll work through those feelings.”

Bucky doesn’t know if she’s right or not. He thinks maybe it’s been too short a time for a noticeable improvement. But he keeps going. For himself mostly, but also for Tony, who always looks so delighted when Bucky kicks him out of the apartment so he can go to an appointment, and for Sam, who keeps asking after his appointments when they talk and never minds when Bucky tells him he doesn’t want to share those details because he’s happy just knowing that he’s going.

He gets home after one of his appointments with Dr. Grey to find Tony curled up outside his apartment door with a box of pizza sitting next to him and Bucky’s guitar in his lap. There’s a couple of the kids who live in the apartment block sitting scattered around him, listening intently as Tony strums softly and sings to them.

_There’s a memory that I could share_

_Sliding down the bannister of our old stair_

_Only for a moment, in midair_

_For that moment I really, really felt like I could fly_

Tony glances up as Bucky tromps up the stairs and smiles at him, that gorgeous smile that could light up the whole room. Bucky feels his heart skip a beat and just as quickly, tamps down that feeling. He can’t go around developing feelings for Tony. It’d be weird. Tony is helping him out, introduced him to Uncle Heff for his arm, talked him into trying therapy again. He’s been helping Bucky relearn playing the guitar too. Developing feelings for him—Bucky refuses to call it a crush when they’re both grown men—is absurd.

And yet…

_I used to dream I was a ballerina_

_I was fighting boose in large arenas_

_I used to dream Prince Charming would one day be mine_

_It seems you’ve had an imagination all this time_

And yet, he swears Tony’s eyes flicker to his as he sings about Prince Charming and like it or not, his heart skips another beat, his thoughts straying to how Tony’s lips felt against his own in that grocery store and what another kiss—a real one this time—would feel like. Would it be the same? Would it be better for knowing each other all the more now?

Tony wraps up the song with a flourish. He stands, stretches, and then bends back down to pick up the pizza. “Sorry, kiddos,” he says cheerfully. “I’ve kept you all here long enough.”

“That pizza still hot?” Bucky asks, nodding at the box.

“Should be. I only picked it up a few minutes ago.”

“And you just decided to wait for me?”

“Got bored,” Tony says with a shrug. “Philanthropic endeavors are long periods of intense boredom, followed by short periods of intense activity.”

“Sure that’s philanthropic endeavors and not bein’ an action hero?” Bucky teases. He fits his key in the lock and turns it, jiggling the handle a little to get it to actually unlock. He reaches out and takes his guitar from Tony. “And I see you have my guitar. Funny, I thought I left that in the apartment.”

“Maybe I magically summoned it to me,” Tony teases right back. He shoulders open the door and slips inside, heading straight for the kitchen. Bucky watches him go bemusedly, wondering when Tony started spending so much time at his place that he knows exactly which kitchen cupboard has the plates.

“We gotta talk about you breaking into my apartment just to steal my guitar,” Bucky says. He strums a couple chords absently. It’s perfectly in tune, as it always is when Tony plays. Bucky doesn’t usually like to lend his guitar out to other people. He finds that they always try to “tune” it and they always get it wrong. But Tony’s different. Bucky wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Tony knows more about music than Bucky could ever hope to learn. He already knows that Tony plays the guitar and piano regularly and is just as familiar with the violin and, strangely enough, the lute.

“I told you, I didn’t break in. I magically—”

“Summoned it, right.” Bucky snorts at the serious look on Tony’s face as he walks into the kitchen. “You and your trade secrets.”

Tony hands him a plate and a glass of red wine. “Dining room or in front of the TV?”

“In front of the TV,” Bucky says decisively. He shoots Tony a teasing grin. “Got some lyrics I want to get down and I don’t want you to get bored. I didn’t know I had wine.”

Tony wanders out to the living room and settles down on the couch, picking up the remote to turn the TV on. “You didn’t. I went out to pick some up. You didn’t notice the bottle sitting next to me on the floor?”

“Was a little distracted by your playing. Sounded real good, ya know.” Bucky sits down next to him, as close as he can without sitting in Tony’s lap. He doesn’t fully know why Tony likes to sit so close to him but he does and if Bucky sits any further away, then Tony will just move closer. _Touch-starved_ , he thinks, to borrow one of Dr. Grey’s terms. He doesn’t mind. He actually thinks he might be a little touch-starved himself, after years of isolating himself away from the rest of the world.

“Are you working on our song?” Tony asks him, watching intently as Bucky reaches for the new song notebook he’d bought a week ago.

“Yeah. And _Suddenly_ isn’t our song.”

“But it’s a duet,” Tony points out. “And you like the lyrics I’ve suggested.”

He doesn’t have an answer for that other than he doesn’t live to think of it as their song because that sounds like he’s getting too attached to Tony, which he already knows he can’t do. So instead, he stuffs half the pizza in his mouth all at once, grinning broadly when Tony wrinkles his nose in disgust.

As Tony settles in to watch the next episode of _Top Gear_ , Bucky starts jotting down the lyrics he’d thought of on the subway trip home. He hums along a little when he’s not eating, testing out the notes.

_And how can I feel you’re all that matters?_

_I’d rely on anything you say_

He takes another bite, puzzling out what he thinks might fit next for Tony’s— _not_ Tony’s, whoever he sings it with—part. And then Tony sings softly:

_I’d take care that no illusions shatter_

_If you dare to say what you should say_

As Tony’s voice rises, holding the note out, Bucky can picture the next part so clearly and he sings, voice twining perfectly with Tony’s.

_You make it seem I’m so close to my dream_

_And then suddenly it’s all there_

He finishes and turns, and Tony is right there, smiling at him with shining eyes. They’re only inches apart, so close that Bucky can feel the warmth of Tony’s breath on his lips. “What do you think?” he whispers, feathering the words across Tony’s lips.

“Beautiful,” Tony murmurs. Bucky’s breath catches, even though he knows Tony is only talking about the song, not himself. “You should call your band, tell them you’re ready.”

“I’m not,” he tries to argue but Tony is already shaking his head.

“Oh my darling, but you are.”


End file.
